


you subsist on loyalty in lieu of bread

by chuchisushi



Series: a functional arrhythmia [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Heart!Daud, Jessamine Lives, Unreliable Narrator, Very Briefly Described Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-14 09:36:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4559673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/pseuds/chuchisushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Lord Protector, Corvo Attano, saves the Empress.</p><p>These are the events that follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He wakes in the cabin of a whaling vessel with bad news folded close in his breast pocket and the whispers of blue-hued dreams lingering on the edges of his mind. Corvo shakes away the uneasiness that seizes his heart (it tastes like the brine and blood that’s sunken deep into the metal of the ship) and rises. He stands for the length of one, two, three heartbeats beside the bed he’d been sleeping in, staring down at the backs of his hands, the fine hairs at the nape of his neck prickling.

A knock at the cabin door startles him out of his contemplation (of what? Even he is unsure), and Curnow’s voice comes through, muffled: “Lord Attano. We’ve arrived.”

Corvo realizes that the near-constant rocking of the ship in motion has stilled - the floor is stable underneath his boots, and Corvo tells himself that it had been this change, after months at sea, that had unsettled him so.

(His hands still look _wrong_ \- but he firmly steers his mind away from such thoughts. They’ll do him no good here.)

The journey back to the palace is uneventful; Corvo meets the eye of every guard he passes, refamiliarizing himself with their faces and the changes from the months he’s missed, detailed in the lines around their mouths and the shadows underneath their eyes. The chatter of the engineers, complaining about Sokolov again, is familiar, and it soothes Corvo’s nerves.

Emily’s enthusiastic greeting does as well, and he has no compunctions about spending a few minutes in a game of hide and seek. The idle talk between Curnow and the guard that had served as the pilot of their boat to the lock hadn’t escaped Corvo, nor its implications in the greater context of Dunwall for the message he will deliver today to Jessamine’s hand. There is little happiness he can grant to his Empress and his Emily anymore save small moments such as these - this is all he can do, and so he does, listening to Emily count down to her hunt for him from his perch in the branches of a nearby tree, watching her with bright dark eyes.

Sokolov paints in the courtyard, composing a portrait of the High Overseer, and Corvo lets Emily run ahead for a moment as he lingers, gaze skimming between the brushstrokes that Sokolov puts to stretched canvas and the man that stands clothed in bright red beyond the both of them.

“I would do better painting the leeward face of a cliff,” Sokolov comments acerbically to Corvo, gesturing dismissively at Campbell with the end of his brush before his eyes slide to the Lord Protector. Sokolov makes a small gesture at his own head, and Corvo reaches up to pull a few leaves out of his hair, giving the other a sheepish smile of gratitude in silent reply before moving along.

He passes Burrows on the walkway to the gazebo. The Spymaster has changed little since Corvo last saw him, and, somehow, this does not surprise Corvo. Burrows merely acknowledges him with a comment about his early arrival, and Corvo nods in reply, eyes and attention already fixed ahead upon the two figures that stand in the shade.

Jessamine… oh, _Jessamine_. The weight of the Empire is writ heavy across her brow in furrowed lines covered with white powder; Corvo longs to wipe them away even as he kneels to kiss the hand she offers him. He is relieved to see, at least, her eyes lighten as she takes in the sight of him returned to her. A secretive, intimate smile curves the bow of her lips for him, and, inside his breast pocket, his message _burns_.

She gains no other reprieve from him. Her fury and grief speak to Corvo in the ramrod line of her back and the fingers that clench the paper of his report hard enough to crease it as she stands facing out towards the sea; he finds himself resisting the urge to move towards her, to shield her, to protect her from the thing that has distressed her so, uncaring of whatever eyes may be on them - a twisted knot of emotion writhes in his throat like a hagfish, squirming in and around itself and choking him as quiet as ever.

The assassins, when they come, are almost a relief.

 

His anger surprises them - had they expected him to be too weary to fight or merely to not have turned on them with such rage? - and part of Corvo notes Jessamine pulling Emily tight to her side, their child’s hands covering her own ears against the ringing report of Corvo’s pistol.

The shot knocks aside the blade of the first assassin, and Corvo ducks, stepping forward at the same time even as he holds the barrel steady, putting the second shot in the thigh of the same man; the blade of the second assassin scythes neatly over Corvo’s head as the first man crumples, howling and clutching at his leg; Corvo turns, parrying a thrust from the second as he continues across the gazebo, closing the distance between himself and the first, and Corvo smiles grimly as he feels the heel of his boot come down solid upon the forearm of the downed assassin. The popping wet snap of breaking bone echoes briefly off of the stone of the gazebo when Corvo’s next step - _stomp_ \- to brace himself for his lunge back at the second comes down _hard_ ; the second barely avoids the slicing arc of Corvo’s blade, cutting low to high across where his chest had been. Corvo feints forward and leaps away again - and reverses the grip on his sword when his instincts scream at him, before his feet even fully touch the ground once again, the length of steel sliding neatly between the ribs of the third assassin to appear behind Corvo before any of them realize the source of the danger.

Flesh parts around his blade and the second assassin stands, frozen in surprise, for just one moment too long; Corvo fires two shots with the pistol still in his hand, dropping the second even as the body of the third hits the stone floor of the gazebo.

Then there is the _fourth_ , running in from the corner of Corvo’s vision, and he ignores Corvo entirely, moves with deliberation, a dogged single mindedness that speaks to Corvo of an iron will bent in its entirety to a single goal, and Corvo ejects the loaded bullets from his pistol even as he raises his hand to _throw it_ at the man in red to halt his sprint towards Jessamine and Emily.

The man dodges, and it’s enough; Corvo is between him and them in the next second, steel grating against steel.

The man is Serkonan. Scars score his uncovered face, and the gray-green eyes that glare at Corvo are the flat coldness of the northernmost glaciers of Tyvia. He _fights_ and it’s an ugly, beautiful thing, _brutal_ strikes that shiver down Corvo’s arm and threaten numbness even as Corvo drives him back and away from Jessamine, from Emily. A slash that Corvo is unable to dodge enough to fully avoid lays open the left side of his face, and, behind him, Emily screams at the sight of his blood on the man’s blade.

The rattle of approaching guards fills the air underneath the gazebo with clattering reverberations finally, _finally_ ; the assassin’s eyes flick from Corvo to Jessamine and the scowl on his face deepens the furrows carved into it. He parries Corvo’s next strike, throwing Corvo back with the heft of his blade just long enough for the man in red to clench his left hand; it flares as bright as a torch, as a lantern, as ( _what?_ ), and -

His body suddenly disintegrates, disappears into impossible fragments of shadow and _void_ (and when Corvo gasps in confusion and surprise, the air that fills his nose and mouth tastes cold and of the sea), and the clinging edges of the world clutch futilely at him strange and grey and sluggish but failing to truly hinder him even as Corvo wheels, lunges forward on some unspoken _unknown_ word, and closes his fingers on coarse strands of black hair as they appear out of nothing.

Corvo _yanks_. The man in red stumbles in his surprise, head falling back - and Corvo catches the expression on his face when it shifts from his iron-willed scowl into confusion (and something else, something dark and bitter and _desperate_ in the depths of those cold grey-green eyes) as Corvo lays open the length of his taut throat with the edge of his blade.

 

Everything is red.

The taste of the cold sea is washed away by warm iron, and the first assassin makes a choked noise of grief from where he lies on the stone as Corvo lets the body drop. There’s a flash of metal in the first assassin’s hand, and he plunges the length of the straight pin in his fingers into the flesh of his broken arm before Corvo can reach him to kick it away; the guards, Burrows, and Campbell arrive in time to watch the assassin die where he writhes on the stone.

 

“Empress Jessamine? Lady Emily?”

“We’re alright, Corvo. We’re alright - " and Emily is suddenly pressed against his side, tiny shoulders shaking as she cries her sour fear away into Corvo’s waist. Her white clothes are staining red from the blood on him, but Corvo doesn’t have the heart to push her away to spare them.

“Burrows, take the bodies. I want to know every secret that they hold and the identities of these men. Campbell, fetch Sokolov - the Lord Protector has been injured.” Jessamine’s brisk orders turn the confused, milling group of men back into organized soldiers; Corvo watches, detached, as some take positions around the gazebo while others pick up the bodies of the assassins. He wipes off his blade on a clean spot on his coat (its fabric is likely unsalvageable now anyway) and sheathes it before resting the less bloody of his two hands on Emily’s back, gently rubbing up and down the length of it as she cries.

He meets Jessamine’s eyes from across the gazebo and is reassured by the fire in them - a welcome alternative to the quiet despair from before the attack.

Sokolov, for once, exercises his atrophied sensitivity and allows Emily to remain glued to Corvo’s side as he treats the Lord Protector; Corvo trails her like a white shadow as he delivers her to her handmaidens for a bath and a change of clothes, and when he has his own bath, she waits outside in his rooms, unwilling to let him move too far away. A servant discreetly informs him, as he dresses, that Lady Emily’s lessons have been cancelled for the rest of the day in light of the events, and Corvo nods in acknowledgement even as his stomach squirms underneath the servant’s protracted scrutiny of the bandage on his face.

Jessamine has retreated to her private study, and Corvo finds her there, Emily’s hand in one of his and his gear kit in his other. The Empress orders all others out of the room - save a single guard at the door whose loyalty and discretion Corvo had personally vetted - and rises to gather both Corvo and Emily close, clutching them to her. Her hands shake against his shoulders, and when they separate long, tense moments later, Corvo kisses her and entwines his fingers with hers.

Emily sits at her own desk and immediately reaches for her sketchbook and pastels as Jessamine leads him to her own desk. He seats himself in the chair that is unofficially his beside her and does not let go of her hand.

“Burrows has reported, preliminarily, that the man in the red coat was Daud.” Corvo feels his eyebrows rise, and Jessamine huffs out a short laugh that is as much bitterness as it is amusement. “Yes. The Knife of Dunwall himself. I took the liberty of having the Royal Treasury add the value of his bounty to your personal coffers - no, don’t give me that look. If you don’t wish to accept it, withdraw the amount yourself and donate it to some lucky soul. Whether or not it was done in the line of duty doesn’t affect that you killed him - and three of his men.” She reaches up to gently touch the bandage on his face, and her eyes harden slightly. “At personal cost, even. It’s a pity you weren’t able to take him alive - it would have done the people good to see justice meted to the blade for hire that has haunted them.”

Corvo cups her hand in his own, presses it in full to his cheek.

“He wouldn’t have come alive,” he murmurs to her, and Jessamine closes her eyes briefly.

“Yes… his job was still incomplete, wasn’t it.”

“Have you any idea…?”

“Plenty.” She scowls and turns her angry gaze to the papers laid out on her desk. “And yet none at all. Placing a target on my back for the Knife would not have come cheaply - but the situation in Dunwall is grave enough that even the most practical might willingly throw away their family fortunes for a choice between the death of an Empress and the Rat Plague. I find I cannot blame them. It hardly seems like a choice at all, does it?”

Corvo kisses her breathless to erase the dull echo of despair in her voice, and Jessamine is laughing like she had in her twenties when they’d been young and fresh in love by the time she pulls away to press her forehead to his, their gazes locked.

“I am so glad to have you at my side once again,” she whispers to him. “For the first time in these long months, my heart has been at peace.”

“And mine as well.”


	2. Chapter 2

Corvo attends to his gear, mentally apologizing to his pistol in the process for his rough treatment of it in the heat of battle, and talks quietly with Emily as she draws. Mikhel, the guard, opens the door to Jessamine’s study again at her signal, and a servant delivers a platter filled with bread, fruit, cheese, and cured meat to them, which Corvo steadily works his way through as Jessamine fields the distressed personal inquiries from nobles, the business of the Empire, and the reports on Dunwall’s continued deterioration. Corvo slices a pear for her as he eats another, sets the sectioned fruit by her elbow, and watches in well-worn amusement as Jessamine eats it without seeming to register its existence.

As evening falls, all three of them are hustled from Jessamine’s study into appropriate finery; an emergency banquet has been arranged to showcase Jessamine’s unchanged condition as a show of strength. Corvo resigns himself to enduring the following hours on his feet as he listens to the inane chatter of the court attempting to curry favor with Jessamine.

Well. At the very least, it will be an opportunity to catch up with the gossip of his several missed months.

 

He’s not disappointed. It’s well into the night by the time Corvo escorts Jessamine and Emily back to their rooms; it’s even later by the time he removes himself from his stifling formal uniform and sits down at his own desk - which is currently covered in paperwork, with a covered dish balanced precariously atop it. He eats as he works, reading backlogged security reports and general reports and reports from patrols; he composes a very brief and very pointed message to the Palace Guard about Jessamine’s safety; and when he finally falls into bed, eyes unable to stay open any longer, it is well past midnight.

He wakes to the light of morning filtering through the room, and it, shamefully, takes the span of several long blinks for Corvo to realize that it is _wrong_ ; when he rises, he does so with caution, for the light streaming over his form is too ruddy, too sharp - it shines like the edge of a blood-wetted blade, and nothing in the room sits quite _right_ underneath its glow.

When he opens the door of his rooms into the hall, it opens out onto _nothing_.

There is blue, _blue_ as far as the earth and sky could hold, coloring in an endless depth that itches at the back of Corvo’s mind for its familiarity. He inhales and it smells like the sea. There are goosebumps on his skin, and Corvo barely takes one step forward before the shadows themselves boil up and out from underneath his feet, collecting on the flagstones in an empty mass before coalescing out and up into the form of a slender man - no. Not a man. A boy, albeit one that looks and _feels_ much older than he appears.

His eyes are as black as pitch, a moonless, starless night in the middle of the open sea, and the shiver that drags its fingers down Corvo’s spine is like _ice._

“Hello, Corvo,” the boy that is not a boy says. “You stand a victor tonight, with the blood of enemies on your hands. You have slain a great threat to the people of Dunwall - a force both feared and revered - and yet there are countless other dangers to your kingdom, your Empress, your Emily, that you know nothing of.

“You stand on the cusp of events that will change your world - and you will play a pivotal role in the days to come.” Corvo’s throat tightens, and the void-eyed boy that is not a boy smiles. It is not a kind expression.

Corvo cannot move - but he does not know if he would, even if he could. A predator will chase prey that flees.

“I am the Outsider,” the boy that is not a boy says, and Corvo barely has time to feel the flicker of alarm and surprise that births itself in his belly before the boy continues, “ - and this is my Mark.”

 

It _burns_. It burns like the ragged slice of a blade, like touching hot iron, and Corvo watches in mute horror as the back of his left hand _steams_ , as lines of light and fire etch themselves across his skin in the shape of a Mark, as the light extinguishes itself and leaves behind its impression in black, like his flesh has scorched to charcoal. He’s afraid to touch it, afraid to see if it would crumble underneath his fingertips, and so he stares instead, his gaze flicking between it and the boy that is not a boy floating before him.

(Corvo will not notice until later, much later, that the soft uneasiness that had plagued him since his dream upon the whaling vessel is now gone, banished by the sight of the Mark branded across the knuckles of his left hand.)

“This Mark grants you access to powers beyond your world - powers that many would call ‘ _magic_.’” The Outsider dips into a mocking bow, lips stretched into another parody of a smile. “Use them. Find me.”

And then he disappears; the shadows underneath Corvo’s feet reassert themselves in the strange eternal light of the place, this place that - (Corvo - well. Corvo certainly suspects it’s the Void, but he does not - cannot, just yet - dwell too long upon the thought.)

Corvo knows of the Outsider, yes. The Abbey despises the god, the devil, and kills those suspected of harboring his powers. The Outsider’s influence had been present in Serkonos - manifested in tales told in whispers or when too drunk to stand: tales of a mysterious dark-eyed man who invited himself, unbidden, to parties - celebrations that soon ended under swarms of rats or drowned in waves if the stranger was insulted. Corvo himself had watched sailors spill wine and blood and the oil from pressed olives into the waves before setting off, their libations given to the Leviathan, the dark-eyed god of the depths, whose temper was that of the sea.

And now… and now, Corvo flexes his left hand, feels the tingle and rush of _power_ underneath his skin, and looks before him.

Energy surges underneath his skin, in his chest, in his head and his heart and his hand in a hot, bright rush like the wind coming off of the sunbaked earth of his homeland, and Corvo is suddenly _there_ , across the way where his eye had been trained, feet firm upon the ground as the echoes of his travel disappear in the air around him.

 _Ah_ , he breathes, and he casts his gaze out to the blue-tinted void around him, clinically assessing the floating islands around him. He practices a few more times on solid (relatively solid) land, gauging the distance he can reliably travel, and takes to the islands within reach, traversing the space between them in the blink of an eye.

He knows he’s not dreaming - he _knows_ he’s not dreaming, can feel the truth in his heart and soul and very bones: dreams have never felt so exhilarating for him, have never granted him this particular live, messy surge of adrenaline and unadulterated joy that he feels in his chest as he effortlessly closes the gaps between islands, flicking through the air on wings of power. He cannot be dreaming, so _why_ \- ?

His thoughts are stolen from him as his feet drop to the stone of the next island. Corvo halts midstep, a hand outstretched towards the figure of Jessamine before him, frozen in the act of turning in her bed, her sheets trapped in midair as though suspended in glass. Her image is so real as to call up the same feelings he experiences for the woman herself, in the flesh; Corvo longs to touch her, to cover the pale, white slope of her shoulder, to tuck himself in beside her - but holds himself back. He does not know the rules of this strange place, and he will not, _can not_ , tempt the being that resides here recklessly. The Outsider’s words come back to him - dangers to the Empire, to Jessamine, to Emily that he has no idea of - and worry cuts through what’s left of the simple joy in his chest.

Slowly, he clenches his left hand - and the Mark flares with light.

 

Corvo Blinks past more tableaus: Sokolov removing the clothing from the corpse of one of the assassins from this afternoon, a notebook marked with bloody fingerprints at his elbow; a cross-section of a street in Dunwall from one of the poorer districts, refuse clogging the cobbles and desperate figures fighting back the night with ragged fires; a cluster of more masked men, dressed the same as the assassins, huddled together in the ruins of a long-abandoned building.

(That one makes Corvo stop and linger for long moments - there are two in blue coats and three in grey, and though all are masked, grief weighs so heavily on their shoulders that it’s obvious to read. One of them is too slender and small, grey cloth swallowing them whole - barely more than a child - but despite that, their coat is buckled and tied back efficiently, freeing their hands and granting them a full range of motion. Corvo stares for long minutes, mind quietly turning over the sort of life that would lead a _child_ to choose the path of an assassin as their best option, before Blinking away.)

 

He finds the Outsider on the furthest-flung island that Corvo can reach; the god, the youth, has the tattered memory of a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth as he watches Corvo’s last, cautious steps towards him.

“You will face many trials in the time ahead,” the Outsider says. “Seek the runes that bear my Mark in the lonely corners of your world. They will grant you power beyond that of any man.” He pauses as though considering, and when he continues, his voice is too sharp, has too many _teeth_.

“Your eyes may not be able to See - but do not despair. There are those that can. One of them has agreed to lend you himself for the purpose.”

The Outsider raises a hand and there is a too-familiar flicker of shadow and Void above it, piecing itself together ripple by ripple until a whole heart hovers above the Outsider’s palm.

 

He flexes his fingers, and it vanishes once more - only to reappear in Corvo’s own hand. He’d recoil if he could.

“I give you the Heart of one bearing my Mark. There is a Rune in this place. You will find me there.”

The Outsider dissolves into shadows once again, and Corvo is left in pained, reluctant contemplation of the organ in his hand. It’s a robust thing, he supposes (in his inexperience), for all that most of it is covered by… Corvo touches the Heart with his other hand and confirms his suspicions: skin - likely human, flayed off of whoever had born it and emblazoned with a Mark exactly like the one on the back of Corvo’s own hand. The skin is dark, well-tanned, and the heart itself is strangely heavy for its size, as though it has been oversaturated with water. It’s warm and smells faintly of iron, arteries and veins tied off with bailing wire; Corvo traces the stitched edge where skin meets flesh and confirms the sound that he’d been feel-hearing against his fingertips: a soft, constant ticking from inside the Heart.

There’s a name caught at the back of Corvo’s throat, but he doesn’t release it; instead, he straightens and points the Heart ahead - and a gruff, tired man’s voice speaks into his ear with a tone like smoke-stained gravel: “Rune. One hundred and thirty-three meters ahead.”

 

Corvo’s hand tightens, and he feels the shape of metal and gears underneath the muscle of the Heart - and Blinks forward to the island that has risen into being before him instead of saying anything in reply.

 

For all the coldness in its strange blue light, the Void has its own scenes of beauty, and the billowing purple fabric that adorns the… shrine, he supposes, to the Outsider, arrested in its motion, makes for a lovely (if disconcerting) sight. The ticking of the Heart had sped at their approach towards it and had quieted down to its normal speed once Corvo had taken the Rune from where it lay, leaving him where he is now - staring up at the Outsider once again.

“How you use what I have given you falls upon you, as it has to the others before you. I will give you one last gift - a mystery. It starts with a name. Delilah.

“If you seek information, secrets - then ask him.” The Outsider tilts his chin down at the Heart held in Corvo’s fingers. “He cannot voice a direct untruth, and you may find his advice… interesting. I now return you to your own world - but know that I will be watching with great attention.”

The last thing Corvo sees before waking in his own bed is the mirthless smile of the Outsider and the twin pools of pitch that meet his eyes - before the Void disappears like a fever dream around him, dispersing as though it never had been.

 

The Heart sits innocuously on his bedside table, ticking quietly in the silence of the room; Corvo stands to check the clock on his mantle and discovers, to his dismay, that it has only been a few hours since he’d taken to bed. He certainly doesn’t feel any more rested than he’d had been before he’d retired, unfortunately.

Reluctantly, he turns back towards his bed and his bedside table and the.... the Heart, sitting atop the latter, apparently harmless if a bit macabre. Corvo stares at it for a long moment before crossing his bedroom back to it, reaching out to tentatively heft it in his hand again.

“Wear gloves,” the Heart says, and Corvo huffs out a breath in mingled surprise and annoyance at the voice. “Don’t think your Abbeymen would take kindly to you flaunting the Outsider’s Mark everywhere you go.”

Corvo rolls his eyes - and then closes them, inhaling in through his nose, the name rising once again in his mouth. He admits to himself that a part of him is afraid to know the truth, afraid to have his suspicions confirmed. There are certainly forces out there beyond his limited comprehension - Corvo is not enough of a fool to believe otherwise - but there are few that are said to be capable of such acts as binding one of his loyal followers to their own departed flesh, or pitting one of his favored against another for the _entertainment_ of it as the Outsider is said to.

“Did he… did he give you a choice?” Corvo murmurs.

“What do you think?” the Heart replies acerbically, tartness replacing the exhaustion in its - in _his_ voice.

Corvo _does_ drop the Heart this time, ignoring the soft, fleshy thump it makes as it hits his bedside table (along with the faint grunt he hears, fading fast as he puts distance between himself and where he’d stood). He ransacks his drawers for gloves appropriate for the season and thinks of excuses to give to others if asked about them and eventually settles on a black pair in worn kid’s leather that wouldn’t look too out of place with the rest of the Lord Protector’s uniform. He’s vaguely sure the original ensemble had included a pair of gloves like these, once upon a time, but that they’d been discarded at some point between then and now in one of his and Jessamine’s soft acts of rebellion against the limitations and propriety imposed on them by their respective social stations.

Corvo lays aside the gloves for tomorrow as the thought of Jessamine turns his eye back to the Heart. Unknown dangers and a name - Delilah - and his mind keeps circling back to the question of _why?_ Corvo’s mouth twists. And now the question of _why him?_

No. He cannot state anything concretely as of yet. He has nothing but his suspicions and intuition, and though both have served him well in the past, it would be foolish of him to settle upon a course of action based solely upon them when other options are available. Sokolov will have the results of his investigations ready in the morning, and Corvo - and Corvo will wait until then to decide whether or not he should trust this particular ‘gift’ from the Outsider.

In the meantime, Corvo shoves the Heart into a drawer and slides back into bed. The new day will start far too soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I REALIZED HOURS AFTER POSTING THE FIRST CHAPTER THAT I'D BEEN SO NERVOUS ABT DOING SO I'D FORGOTTEN TO ACTUALLY... SAY ANYTHING IN THE AUTHOR NOTES........ SO, HELLO EVERYONE TO THIS TENTATIVE FORAY INTO DISHONORED. I HOPE THIS CHAPTER CLARIFIES A BIT ABT WHERE THIS FIC IS HEADING. many thanks to [driftwoodq](http://archiveofourown.org/users/driftwoodq) for betaing for me and listening to me scream alternately abt dishonored and jjba. you're a trooper. :"|


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aka: in which corvo and daud get to know each other, corvo is displeased about the entire situation, and daud starts to get a clue.

Corvo wakes himself when light begins to filter in through the window.

He lies still for a long moment, grasping at dispersing, blue-hued dreams, before rolling out of bed.

 

It takes a moment for the night to catch up to him - it’s as Corvo stretches, joints popping with his motions, that he catches sight of the Mark branded across the back of his hand. A jolt of alarm runs through him at it, and his dreams - his _memories_ \- rush back to him in sudden, lurid clarity. He crosses his bedroom, feet falling oddly-fast upon the rugs, and yanks open the drawer of the bedside table where he’d shoved the Heart to confirm. It yields easily under his strength and reveals within it the same Mark as his, done in the same charcoal black, staring mercilessly back up at him.

Meeting the Outsider had been the truth, then. A concrete truth, the proof of the events branded in the Mark on Corvo’s hand and the travesty of flesh, wire, and stitches that ticks to itself within his bedside drawer. Corvo hears the faintest echo of derisive laughter as he stands before the Heart, and his mouth twists in displeasure in response.

He leaves the drawer open and does not speak as he resumes his interrupted morning ablutions, unwinding the bandage from his face and washing away the night’s fingerprints. Mindful of his injury, his hands come away from his skin salty as though with seafoam, but Corvo wipes them dry, lips pressed together into a thin line, before dressing his wound and himself, pulling the black leather of his gloves over his knuckles in silence.

(He takes the Heart with him after a moment of hesitation in front of the drawer, tucking the organ into his inner breast pocket. He does not want to - but the Outsider’s words linger in his thoughts, provoking a refrain of _why me? why me? why me?_   that will not quieten. Better safe than sorry. There is danger around every corner.)

The guards posted in front of Jessamine and Emily’s doors confirm the lack of disturbance in the night, and Corvo leaves them at their stations to fetch himself breakfast from the familiar tumult of the kitchens. He lets himself into Jessamine’s study afterwards, nodding to the guards outside it as well before shutting the door behind him and looking towards the documents that have been placed upon Jessamine’s desk since the previous afternoon. He has few qualms about breaching the confidence of the Empire like this - what Jessamine knows, Corvo does as well, linked together by their positions as they are. She keeps precious few secrets from him, and the Empire keeps precious few from _her_.

He thumbs through the folded sheaves, searching, and finds what he seeks with little trouble. Corvo picks up the papers that comprise Sokolov’s report and breaks the seal on them to peruse their contents, seating himself in Jessamine’s chair as he does.

Sokolov describes each of the assassins in scratchy black script, clinically stating details about their bodies and the causes of their deaths (and Corvo cannot help but wince when he reaches the description of the ravages the Whaler’s pin had wrought - at least Corvo’s blade had granted a clean death.) Corvo reads everything the man has written, letting each word settle in the place in his mind where he stores knowledge from previous, thwarted assassinations, meticulously putting details to the raw, broad strokes of violence and blood that he’d experienced.

He reads the confirmation of Daud’s identity once. Twice. Thrice.

He sets the papers down on Jessamine’s desk. He reaches for the Heart and pulls it out of his breast pocket, holds it in his hand as his eyes skim sightlessly once more over the words before him, mentally piecing together the shape of what he wants to say.

“Tattoos?” is what he breaks the silence with.

“Remnants of bygone days,” the Heart replies, and Corvo could almost smile at the touch of evasiveness in its voice. He doesn’t, though. He doesn’t.

“No Mark. And Sokolov reports a heart in your chest when he split you apart to see how you ticked.”

There is a pause, and then the Heart says, “The Outsider works in mysterious ways. What of it?”

 

Corvo’s lips pull back from his teeth at the Heart’s words and finally, _finally_ , he gives voice to the name that has been rotting bitterly on the back of his tongue since the previous evening, since Corvo’s too-real blue-hued dreams and the burn of the Mark on his hand.

“ _Daud_ ,” Corvo snarls.

“Yes,” Daud’s Heart replies.

 

“Why did the Outsider give _you_ to me? Why the heart of the very man hired to kill the woman that I gave my life to guard?”

“The Outsider works in mysterious ways. Perhaps he thought it would be _interesting_.”

There’s an ugly, jeering edge to the voice that speaks in Corvo’s ear, like the rusted metal of a blade left corroding in the sea, replete with a doubled-back echo like the voice of the Void itself. Corvo’s fingers tighten at it, and the Heart - _Daud’s_ Heart - continues, relentless, meanly heedless of the implied threat.

“Perhaps he thought you wouldn’t be _able_ to do it on your own. That you would fail to protect the life of the woman you gave your ‘ _own life_ ’ to guard. That you would fail to protect her heiress. That you would fail to protect the Empire. What _can_ you do right now, bodyguard? Only transversals? It won’t be enough. My Whalers could learn those within their first week by my side - ”

The voice cuts off abruptly, disappearing, and it takes Corvo the full length of a minute in the resounding silence to loosen his hand, freeing the muscle of Daud’s Heart from the catch of its grind against the gears within it. Corvo fights back the black swell of protective rage in his chest as he does, pushes it back down into stillness.

He does not trust this man before him - this man that the Heart had been, this supposed tool that the Outsider had ‘gifted’ him with. For all of Jessamine’s teasingly flattering words to Corvo, Daud _had_ been a legend, one of the keenest blades to sink home in Dunwall’s flesh. He had been a man whose honor lay sewn into the stitching of a coin purse and in coffers lined with bloodsoaked gold; he had been a killer for hire that would serve at the side of a lord at the end of one week and for his deceased target’s grieving family the next. He had tried to _kill Jessamine_ \- nevermind that he’d failed (and Corvo has his own suspicions about that, now, remembering his dreams on the ship back to Dunwall) - Daud had been hired to kill the Empress.

The Outsider had bound him to his current form to assist Corvo, and the god had stated that the Heart could not directly speak a lie. But such a statement, even were it true, did not preclude the Heart deliberately misleading him with unspoken words as revenge upon the man who had killed him; in the absence of surety, Corvo finds that he trusts the Heart as much as he would have trusted the man it had once belonged to: that is to say, none at all.

A tool with its own mind and will, bound (perhaps unwillingly) to Corvo, and Corvo _knows_ , deep within his bones and in his gut, that the power the Outsider’s Mark has granted him could very well lead him to ruin in the same way it had for Daud.

No. He certainly does not trust these ‘gifts.’

 

“What _can_ you do, then,” Corvo finally asks, breaking the silence in Jessamine’s study, and there is nothing in response but the Heart’s soft ticking for a long moment.

“Many things.”

Corvo manfully resists the urge to dash the accursed thing against the floor at the deliberately obtuse non-answer, the ‘honor’ of the Outsider’s bloody regard be damned, but as his fingers tighten warningly against it, the Heart continues.

“Can see runes and bone charms. Stuff to use or steal, too. Used to be able to travel distances as you… saw. But.

“Slow time - it made the world run like honey, those trapped little the wiser for what they’d missed.” The Heart punctuates the statement with a harsh, grating laugh, and it’s too easy to hear the bitterness in the sound. “Didn’t work against you, though.

“Pull or push things - as though force was a whip or a hand with a reach longer than mine.

“And the Whalers. I gave them a sliver of my power in exchange for their loyalty, and I could use that bond between us to call them to my side.”

The Heart falls silent, and Corvo chews at his lip for a moment before asking, “What can you do _now_?”

“All of it. I _still_ bear the Outsider’s Mark, don’t I?”

An involuntary shiver works its way down Corvo’s spine at the flat finality in the Heart’s voice; he says, “What do you know about the name Delilah?” to cover it, swallowing down his unease.

The Heart ticks, and Corvo waits, thoughts cycling once again back to the Outsider, the Mark, the powers that have been given to him, the gifts and the threats that all of them pose - all laid against the backdrop of unknown threats to Jessamine, to Emily, to the Empire. He has nothing but a name, one more gift that could lead to victory or ruin, and despite Corvo’s own trepidations about the situation, the Outsider had said to ask the Heart, so…

“Nothing more than what you already know,” it answers, finally - and Corvo snarls, frustration rising within him again.

“Then what good _are_ you for protecting the Empress and Lady Emily?” he demands of the Heart.

“Plenty. It’s hard my fault you’re too stupid to see, _bodyguard_.”

Corvo makes an incoherent noise of anger at that, vaunted patience finally dissolving underneath the Heart’s pointed commentary and his own mounting frustrations, and drops the Heart to Jessamine’s desk, where it lands, skipping once with a distressingly wet, fleshy noise upon impact. A part of Corvo - the part of him that is not seething with his directionless, thwarted desire to do _something_ to protect what is dearest to him - is glad that it leaves no blood on Jessamine’s blotter. The rest of him remains _furious_ , internally cursing the Void, the Outsider, and Daud himself.

“I do not trust you,” Corvo bites out. Then, a beat later, “Who hired you to kill the Empress?”

“Would you even believe me if I told you?” the Heart says, and laughs cruelly when Corvo’s face darkens.

 

“Lord Attano?”

There is a tentative tap at the door of Jessamine’s study, and Corvo startles, snatching up both the Heart and Sokolov’s report, shoving the lot into his pockets; hastily, he stands as the maid opens the door a sliver and pokes her head inside.

“My apologies for disturbing you, Lord Attano, but her Majesty has awoken.” Corvo can’t help the way he brightens when he hears that, and the maid flashes him the briefest of smiles before withdrawing from the door entirely, her message delivered. Corvo spares a moment to glance down at Jessamine’s desk, making sure nothing unsealed has been left where prying eyes could see, and hurries to the door himself.

Jessamine is seated before the mirror at her vanity, a maidservant combing the length of her hair and arranging it as a crown upon her head. Corvo smiles at her reflection, and she returns it, her eyes brightening when she meets his.

“Has my blackbird brought me something shiny?” she asks, voice teasing, and Corvo laughs despite the persistent echo of worries that ebb and flow in his mind, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing the pages that comprise Sokolov’s report. Jessamine takes them from him and starts at the beginning; Corvo stands silent in his place behind her shoulder, watching her expression grow more and more closed off and contemplative the further she reads.

It makes his heart ache to see her so - fills him with a quiet sense of futility for his lack of ability to fight what he cannot touch. Daud’s Heart ticks quietly in his breast pocket, beat tangible through the fabric of his shirt, and the Outsider’s words chase themselves round and round in Corvo’s head: dangers to the Empire, to Empress Jessamine, to Lady Emily that he does not know and that are as real as the threat implied in the sheaves of paper that Jessamine holds in her hands. The side of Corvo’s face, where Daud had drawn blood, _throbs,_ and Corvo bites down on the soft inner flesh of his cheek until he tastes iron.

It isn’t until later, as they walk to Jessamine’s study, that Corvo acts, drawing level with her in the hall and bending his head to ask her in an undertone if she has heard the name Delilah. She gives him a sideways glance out of the corner of her eyes at his query and minutely shakes her head in a negative, replying in an undertone, “Not recently. Not unusually. Is there…?”

It’s Corvo’s turn to shake his head. “A whisper of a rumor,” he murmurs in reply; Jessamine’s brows are still pinched in concern and confusion, but she acknowledges his words all the same.

“If you discover anything…”

“Of course. I will it bring it back to you, as always.”

She smirks at that and says, teasingly, “As my blackbird always does,” before bidding him farewell at the door of her study, Corvo bowing to her before retracing his path through the halls to Emily’s rooms.

Inside, the heiress to the Empire sits before her mirror, eyes heavy and small face still sleep-rumpled; she brightens when Corvo steps into view behind her, his reflection appearing in her vision. Emily whips her head to the side (the handmaiden standing behind her instantly letting go of her tresses before any damage can be done) and leaps out of her seat to throw herself at Corvo.

He catches her, as he always does (and always will unless, _unless_ , his heart whispers); her arms are tight around his neck, and Corvo cannot delude himself into pretending that her hold on him has no desperation in it.

When the handmaiden that had been arranging Emily’s hair finally manages to coax her off of him and back into her seat, Corvo straightens where he stands and carefully keeps his expression from changing when one of the other handmaidens (a girl in her teens who would always smile at Corvo when he was with Emily and who had walked through the Tower gardens hand-in-hand with a scullery girl when times had been better and the days warmer) steps up to his side and whispers in his ear about Emily’s broken slumber, plagued by nightmares and helpless murmurs begging a man in red for mercy.

Corvo carefully tamps down the fury that springs to life in his chest at the words, mentally cursing Daud, but displays none of his worry and protectiveness to Emily when her handmaidens are finished preparing her for the morning. Instead, he keeps to the lighthearted patter he usually exchanges with her as they walk hand-in-hand to Jessamine’s study. He tells Emily stories from his past months of travel, carefully excising the darker, more-hopeless details from them for her, and relinquishes her to Jessamine when she steps out of her study to join them.

(“You don’t do her any favors treating her so gently,” the Heart says when Corvo falls into step behind them. “She’ll have to learn the cruelty of the world soon, bodyguard.”

But it falls silent when Corvo pulls sharply at the back of his uniform as though to straighten the fabric, putting pressure against his chest - and against the contents of the pockets therein.)

After breakfast there are meetings - many, many meetings that Corvo endures through practiced stoicism and the weariness that comes from years of repetition. Through it all, the Heart is a heavy weight against his chest. For a few, precious moments this morning, Corvo had managed to forget its presence. Now, with little more to do than to try to stay awake against the endless prattle and political push-pull of Jessamine and her councils, it’s an almost unbearable reminder of what has happened and what is at stake and of the man it once had been. Corvo does not relish the continued opportunity to endure the Heart’s pointed commentary upon the life that he leads with Jessamine and Emily.

And yet, the Heart remains silent.

All the way through lunch, through more meetings as Jessamine argues with Sokolov about the best way to handle the infected of Dunwall, as the Academy’s brightest huddle together, murmuring worriedly amongst themselves over sheaves of paper completely filled with crabbed black ink; through the interminable meeting with Burrows as the man and Jessamine discuss who could have hired Daud and his Whalers; through Corvo reluctantly handing Jessamine over to the care of the Palace Guard as Corvo himself slips away to the training fields, his usual partners already there and waiting for him in the sand of the arena; through the quick meal that Corvo eats afterwards with his hair still damp and curling from the heat of the bath and the lingering exertion from the fight.

Through the quiet hours that evening that Corvo spends sitting with Jessamine and Emily in Jessamine’s study, as Jessamine writes endless pages of notes to herself, a crease between her brows as she doublechecks the copies of the minutes from the meetings she had attended against her own recall.

Through the both of them putting Emily to bed when they catch her yawning; through the hour that Jessamine and Corvo share afterwards in their secret space, passing a bottle of cheap Dunwall whiskey back and forth between them, taking swings of the harsh liquor until they’re both slightly tipsy and laughing quietly about it so they can ignore the weight of the failing Empire that rests squarely on Jessamine’s shoulders.

 

The Heart doesn’t speak again until later - much later, when Corvo is sneaking into his rooms through his bedroom window in sync with the changing of the Palace Guard, his and Jessamine’s mingled scent clinging to his skin and his hair tousled by the insistent carding of her inkstained fingers.

“You’re a fool, bodyguard,” is all it says, falling stubbornly silent afterwards despite everything Corvo snarls to it, cursing the murderer who had so threatened the lives of Jessamine and Emily, who had threatened the stability of the Empire, who had the blatant _audacity_ to boldly make such statements judging their lives as though it knew anything about the events that had brought he and the Kaldwins to this point.

“What does the Outsider want from this - all of this? Did he _send_ you to kill them? Was that part of his grand plan for an entertaining _show_ as well?”

But Corvo gets no answer; eventually, he dulls the knife’s edge of his anger upon the Heart’s stony lack of response. When Corvo finally retires to bed, he wraps himself up in his cold sheets, alone, and closes his eyes against the buzz of impotent frustration in his veins, forcing himself to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aka: in which corvo clutches the idiot ball and refuses to let go

The next day is much of the same, and Corvo goes through it with a growing sense of unease for the weight that he carries in his breast pocket – a weight that remains silent once more. He doesn’t realize how much his thoughts linger on Daud’s Heart until he catches himself wondering if he should try to speak with it – with him. To, maybe, apologize for some of the things he’d accused it of when he’d been flush off of the reminder of what Jessamine meant to him as he’d been last night, because as much as they both dislike the situation, they are both irreversibly, irrevocably bound by the Outsider.

Then he catches himself. Exasperated by the train of his thoughts, Corvo mentally scowls – everything that he had said to the Heart had been true. He has nothing to apologize for and owes the Heart nothing, no matter what the more sentimental side of him says. Instead, Corvo turns his attention back to the puzzle of the name Delilah. What few inquiries he’d made on his own merit have borne no fruit, and, now, Corvo wonders if perhaps his own skills are ill-suited to this endeavor. He has been little else but a military man – a man of the steel that composes the edge of a blade – for most of his life, and though he excels with the sword (and, indeed, with every weapon that he’s been able to lay his hands on), his skills beyond those of combat and the logistics inherent in guarding Jessamine and Emily are a bit lacking.

It had never been his job to do anything but to keep the Empress – and then her heir – safe. Indeed, more often than not, Corvo had found himself reacting to situations as they occurred rather than _anticipating_ their occurrence; that, after all, was his duty – to protect, no matter the circumstances (and, in fact, _despite_ them, at times).

No… for someone who _knew_ things, whose job and duty it was to predict and plan accordingly… Corvo finds his gaze drifting to Burrows where he sits before Jessamine, the Spymaster watching her as she pores over the papers that he had brought her today. Burrows had arranged this meeting to brief Jessamine about a potential plot, a possible threat – Corvo replays the past several minutes in his mind for the substance of what Burrows and Jessamine had been speaking of. Yes, illegal trading: the act rotting a noble’s family from the inside out as the lot of them looked the other way in favor of lining their pockets. Nothing dangerous in and of itself, but there was the possibility that more than goods were being bought and sold. Burrows wanted the license to investigate further and so was here before Jessamine to petition for it.

“Don’t trust the man,” the Heart says, suddenly, and Corvo bites his tongue to stifle the noise he almost makes in his surprise – across the room, Burrows looks up at him, and Corvo strives to keep his expression neutral in the face of the man’s sudden scrutiny.

Fortunately, Corvo is rescued, albeit unintentionally, by Jessamine, who straightens where she sits, neatly stacking the papers together as she says, “Very well. Infiltrate the trading ring, determine the extent of their operations and what goods they are moving, and report back to me. I will decide what will be done with them.”

Burrows inclines his head in assent, straightening the edges of the stack of paper Jessamine hands to him, before standing when she does and bowing as she leaves the room, Corvo detaching from the wall and falling into step behind her.

Corvo holds his tongue, waiting until Jessamine is delivered to the Palace Guards, the squadron surrounding her as she moves off down the hall, to speak; he presses a hand to his breast pocket against Daud’s Heart as he walks out of the Tower towards the training grounds, hissing, “What do you mean ‘don’t trust him’?” at it.

“Are you dense as well as obtuse? I meant exactly what I said – don’t trust Hiram Burrows,” the Heart replies tartly, voice short.

Corvo can’t keep his face from darkening at that. “The man has been Spymaster for nigh on seven years. I have your word – the word of a murderer, a paid assassin – against the work that he has done for the Empire. Why should I trust you, of all people?”

The Heart laughs at him then, rough barks of noise that don’t hold a single trace of humor. “Because, bodyguard, I’m likely one of the most honest men you’ve met since you set foot back on Dunwall’s shores. I didn’t make any bones about what I did for living – it was never a secret that I killed for coin.

“Don’t mistake me, bodyguard – I supplied a service to Dunwall, the same as a surgeon or a butcher. Plenty of nobles paid me to get rid of someone – Hiram Burrows included.”

“You lie.”

“Why in the Void would I lie to you now?”

Corvo doesn’t reply, already sliding his coat off of his shoulders in preparation for his daily practice bout – and the Heart’s voice vanishes with the action, disappearing like the echo of a fever dream.

Corvo’s glad for the exertion the fight gives him, and his training partners soon call for two others to join in to give Corvo a proper challenge; Corvo throws himself into the match, glad for the chance to burn away the lingering marks of his frustration on his temper. By the time the lot of them part ways, Corvo feels the most centered he’s been in days. The Heart is, mercifully, silent; it remains so for the remainder of the day, past nightfall and the hour at which Jessamine retires.

“Take us somewhere where we won’t be seen or overheard. There might be a way to help you in your fool ambitions, but it lies on more than me,” it says, and though Corvo wrinkles his nose at being ordered around by it, he complies all the same, willing to put up with it for the sake of Jessamine, of Emily, of the Empire.

They end up in a solarium, unused in these wintering months and so locked up until the seasons turn; it’s the work of seconds for Corvo to slide inside, and the Heart waits until the door is shut behind them and Corvo has made a circuit of the room to check for watching eyes to speak again.

“Take me out,” it says, and Corvo does so, holding it in his Marked hand in mild confusion. “Point me at a clear bit of floor,” it says, and Corvo does so, confusion intensifying – and, in his hand, Daud’s Heart _beats_.

It throbs against Corvo’s fingers as their Marks flare into life. Corvo inhales sharply at the surge of power simultaneously within and without him – it feels _strange_ , like something splitting him open painlessly to reach inside his warm vital workings, slipping foreign fingers around an organ needed for his survival and drawing it out of him without breaking; he outright gasps when the feeling turns caressing, intimate and warm in him like coming _home_ , like the carding of Jessamine’s fingers through his hair, like the pressure of Emily’s arms around his neck, like seeing the lights of Dunwall Tower from the sea and knowing that he has returned and yet, and yet, and _yet_ , it is not – not for _him_.

Corvo cannot say how he knows, but the foreignness of the feeling, the sense of intrusion and unwelcome voyeurism on something that he _knows_ was not meant to be witnessed by him in this way is almost enough to make bile rise at the back of his throat, discomfort destroying whatever enjoyment or understanding he could have gleaned from the experience. This isn’t for him. This _isn’t for him_.

His distraction is so complete that it actually takes Corvo a belated moment to realize that he is no longer alone in the solarium – and Daud’s Heart beats him to acknowledgement of the fact with a single word:

“Bille.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh, but one more thing before i leave you all with this minor cliffhanger - in light of this chapter and some comments i've gotten on this fic, i feel like i need to add a disclaimer that this story is very much an alternate universe compared to the game proper - characters and their motivations will be different due to the situation being different, especially re: burrows' conspiracy. Corvo in the game proper didn't have much of a choice in which options he could take and burrows had been trying (and failing) to rule the city for something like six to eight months - plenty of time for the cognitive and efficiency decay that we see in the game. Before that, burrows had served as spymaster for seven years; as corvo has stated, that's seven years of service for the good of the empire as versus the testimony of an infamous assassin that corvo killed in the act of assassinating the empress. should he have considered the possibility that daud wasn't talking out his arse? yeah, probably, but no-one said corvo's job was finegaling out political conspiracies, HAHA.
> 
> i do realize that this sort of plot point may not be for everyone and may even be regarded as ooc - i'm operating off of my interpretation of the characters, which may not mesh with others'. All that I can say at this point in time is that I do already have the events of the fic planned out to the end ovo/ anyway, thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

There is a figure in a red coat before him, and for a startled, confused second, Corvo actually wonders if Daud has come back to life.

The illusion doesn’t last for long – the figure’s hand flies towards the blade at its hip, Corvo’s hand darts for his own, and the snap of the Heart’s voice, sharp-edged and demanding, makes one freeze and the other follow in its cessation of motion.

“Stand _down_ , Billie. We need to talk, not slit throats.” The Heart’s voice is firm, with no room for arguments or disobedience, and Corvo doesn't breathe as he waits, suspended, for the next move; the figure in red is silent, still, holding its position as the seconds tick by. Corvo doesn’t need to gaze through the eyes of the mask the other wears to see the disbelief on the Whaler’s face – it’s all-too obvious in every line of their body, the way their hand is too loose on the hilt of their blade.

“… old man?” the figure in red finally says, and Corvo’s chest twinges suddenly at the undercurrent of ruin he can hear in the woman’s voice.

“Billie,” the Heart says again, acknowledgement and greeting all in one, and like that the spell breaks; the Whaler’s movements are harsh and jerky as she straightens, ramming her blade back into its sheath.

“What in the _Void -_ ” she begins, and the Heart interrupts, cutting in brusquely.

“The mission failed. Ardo, Tyberius, and Lloyd are dead. I am, too. Job’s not worth the price anymore – drop it. That’s an order and the last one I’ll give you.” It stops, as though to let the finality of those words sink in, and Corvo can, for the briefest of moments, almost feel the physical presence of the man it had once been, filling the space between himself and the woman before him. “You’re the leader of the Whalers now. The black-eyed bastard’s bound me to this and him – I can’t guarantee what I’d promised the lot of you anymore.”

It stops, and there’s silence for a moment before it says, in the closest approximation at gentle Corvo has ever heard from it, “Pick a second. Someone loyal to _you_. Tell the others and let them choose whether or stay or leave. As far as I know, conditions for the bond are the same as they were before – loyalty in exchange for the power. Given the circumstances and how the future of the Whalers is out of my hands now, you need to give them that choice.”

“You _fucker_ ,” Billie spits in reply, yanking off her mask; anger colors her voice and amplifies the strange echoes Corvo hears in it, redoubles her voice treblefold. “You. _Motherfucker. You_ – ”

“Billie,” the Heart cuts in again. “I’m _dead._ There’s nothing else to do now but to keep moving.”

“Jenkins’ been telling the trainees that you’d just – holed up somewhere. That you hadn’t contacted any of us because it wasn’t safe yet,” Billie grinds out, her mouth caught between a frown and a snarl. Her gloved hands have tightened into fists.

“Jenkins is a fool,” the Heart replies, and, now, there’s exhaustion pulling at every syllable. “It’ll be rough, Billie. Transfer of power like this never goes easy, business with the black-eyed bastard aside.” There’s a pause. “Billie. I can’t make you do anything. Especially not now. But…”

The Heart’s words hang in the air, and the silence they cause stretches long and drawn out – before Billie’s shoulders drop. The Heart ticks away in Corvo’s hand three; five; nine, before she says, voice soft, “I know” – and the words fall flat and sink with a finality like lead, disappearing fast down into pitch-dark depths. “ _Shit_. I know, old man.”

Corvo watches as she dully stares down at the whaler mask she holds – before her expression hardens and she lowers her hands, yanking the straps of the mask through and around her belt, leaving her face uncovered. “The rest of the money from the Empress job - ” she starts.

“Cover the difference from my savings,” the Heart says, and Billie’s fingers fumble at that, slide right off of the leather as her head whips up, eyes fixed on the Heart in Corvo’s hand.

“Daud – that’s…”

“… it’s never going to happen now, Billie,” the Heart says softly, flatly, with the sort of finality that one uses when stating bad news, and Billie closes her eyes like she’d been struck.

But, “I can see why you call him a bastard,” is all that makes it out of her mouth, exhaled before she opens her eyes. “The combination for the first safe?”

Corvo shifts slightly where he stands. There are fingerprints of a life here that Corvo should not be privy to, that he would not want to know of, and, for the first time, the weight of Daud’s death pulls at Corvo here, before the woman who must now inherit the Knife’s legacy. He is uncomfortable for the reflection of what Daud has left behind laid out before him, being thoroughly lost on the byways of a conversation between two people who had known each other so long and so well that every other word rang of a hundred other conversations long past. Corvo remembers the tableau he’d seen in the Void – children in training, their edges being honed into those of knives, and caught frozen in that moment in their silent grief – and wonders what will happen to them. What now, in the wake of the loss of Daud? Corvo does not fancy himself a fool, and the implications of this overheard conversation do not escape him: Corvo closes his eyes, steeling himself for what he’s about to do – and opens them again when he says, voice clear, if subdued:

“What would it cost to hire the Whalers?”

 

Both the Heart and Billie fall silent, and Corvo meets Billie’s stare evenly for the first time, straightening his shoulders against the sharpness in it.

“For what,” she eventually says, gaze never leaving his, challenging, and Corvo’s chin goes up at her tone, jaw firming.

“To keep you and yours from another attempt on Jessamine’s life. To allow you to retain your powers via your loyalty to Daud, as his ambitions are now mine. To perform acts in my stead that I cannot, due to my position and duties. No time period on employment – I’ll pay you wages for as long as I retain your services.”

Billie is silent for a long moment, eyes narrowing at him – before her gaze flicks, just for a second, to the Heart. Corvo doesn’t need to know her to hear the venom in her voice when she spits a number at him, adding, “Per week,” to it afterwards; Corvo mentally compares it to the amount of money in his personal coffers before nodding, ignoring the soft doubts in the back of his heart about this agreement being a betrayal of Jessamine, of Emily, of the Empire.

Billie writes them a contract on paper pulled from a belt pouch, the sheets wrapped in oilcloth to spare them from water. Her handwriting is square and blunt, all capitals in bold lines of grease pencil, and she constructs the terms with a rote sort of efficiency that makes Corvo think she has been privy to the drafting of many such agreements. Corvo reads it over, points out a few clarifications, and watches her write out two copies of the final version. She taps the end of the paper, afterwards, turning her gaze to him again.

“Sign it in blood,” she says, brusque, and watches him with dark eyes as Corvo pauses to tuck the Heart away, pulling off a glove with his teeth and bending to unsheathe a dagger from his boot. He pricks the ball of his thumb with the blade; crimson wells up and Corvo presses it to first one page, then the other, and pretends he doesn’t feel the whisper of cold, pale fingers that trail down the nape of his neck, the Outsider’s Mark glimmering as though caught by nonexistent light from the shadows of the solarium.

Billie does the same with a knife from her belt, and both of them stand in silence as they watch their blood soak into the fibers of the paper and dry.

“First payment due at the drop point at the end of the week,” she tells him, voice clipped, and Corvo nods curtly, already mentally rearranging his schedule to compensate for the sneaking he’ll have to do to get out of the Tower.

“Look into the name Delilah,” he returns; Billie glares at him for a moment longer as she folds her copy of their contract into quarters and tucks it away – but the vicious furrow between her brows eases slightly when her eyes dart to Corvo’s chest and the Heart tucked away in his breast pocket.

She dissolves into ripples of shadow and void without another sound, leaving Corvo alone in the dark solarium.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which corvo holding the idiot ball comes back to bite him in the ass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: oh hey the low chaos week event is next week. i should do something for that  
> life: reminds me that i'm Dying this month  
> me: .... right okay maybe i'll type up some chapters of breadfic to post from the ridiculous backlog i have instead,

Corvo, eventually, does ask Burrows about Delilah, the Heart murmuring curses and insults into Corvo’s ears all the while as he speaks to the Spymaster. When Corvo is finished talking, Burrows stares at him with flat eyes for a long moment, as though considering his memories, before replying, “No.”

And that is the end of that.

Corvo doesn’t miss the way Burrows compulsively wipes at the faint handprints Corvo had left on the polished surface of the Spymaster’s desk after, the way he rearranges the papers Corvo had been nearest as Corvo leaves his office, and Corvo internally reminds himself of Burrows’ meticulous nature and his years of loyal service as he closes the door behind him. He hopes to quiet the faint suspicion that chews at the edges of his instincts. When he fails, standing in the hall, he stares instead into the middle distance, presses a hand to his chest over his breast pocket, and murmurs quietly, “Hush.”

He thinks, later, that it will never not surprise him when the Heart actually complies, falling silent underneath his fingertips. Corvo doesn’t know whether or not Daud has… resigned himself to his fate (and, somehow, that thought sits _poorly_ with Corvo, uneven like broken cobbles underneath his feet), but as the days had turned into weeks at Jessamine’s side after their midnight meeting with Billie, the harsh, bloody edge had faded out of the Heart’s voice, blunted – by what, Corvo doesn’t know – until the Heart addresses him like an especially exasperating forced companion instead of like its warden.

Billie and the Whalers have given him nothing about Delilah, though they _have_ passed on information about other topics – messages concerning this or that rumor, an ill-concealed court plot, or of some tentative offer for the Empress’ head. Corvo makes sure those threats are relayed to one of the networks he knows the Spymaster has a hand in, and he tries to not be disappointed when the Whalers that meet him at their drop points don’t have news of the mysterious, elusive Delilah. He tells himself that it could takes months – that any puzzle passed on by the Outsider can have nothing but a tangled web surrounding it – and spends night and day at Emily and Jessamine’s sides and tries to not count how many more weepers he sees in the streets with every weekly sojourn to pay the Whalers.

(He wonders, after, how Burrows and the Abbey had managed the subterfuge that had allowed them to make their plans, how they had managed to weave their machinations. How they had convinced Jessamine without Corvo being alerted in the slightest. Had their strategies had been executed in those small spaces of time, when he had necessarily been pulled away from the Tower? If he had been more diligent, could he have predicted what would occur?

He supposes it matters little now.)

He is surrounded in the sere remains of the gardens, the plants gone dormant in preparation for the looming winter; a full battalion of the Palace Guard surround him where he walks towards their barracks for his daily spar, and Corvo feels only confusion and concern at the grim looks of determination on their faces (all unknowing of the cause as he is), innocent until the first strains of _music_ reach him.

Then he feels nothing but fear, and the Heart is roaring at him to _run, dammit; it’s an ambush!_ – before it’s cut off, its voice replaced by a clattering, gyrating not-silence that trips through the air lopsided on mathematically perfect notes, each sapping the vitality from underneath Corvo’s skin.

Burrows steps forward through the ring of soldiers, and Corvo can see the blank-faced countenances of Overseers behind him, death-pale and gold-gilt. There is a growing emptiness in Corvo’s chest. Burrows’ words – accusations of conspiracy with the Whalers, conspiracy to assassinate the Empress Jessamine Kaldwin, sabotage of the relief efforts for Dunwall, the sale and barter of confidential information, heretical influence – wash over Corvo in a dull roar as his eyes track above the heads of the guards, the Overseers, the Spymaster, to meet the steel-and-fire gaze of Jessamine where she stands beyond all of them, surrounded by her own phalanx of guards and Overseers. Whatever regret she feels for what she has ordered done is subsumed underneath blazing anger, a fury that burns cold like the witchlight that had danced along the rigging of the ship that had transported Corvo to Dunwall, twenty-one years ago.

She is beautiful.

He would die for her.

  
The blow, when it comes, mercifully ends his internal turmoil, and Corvo’s body falls to the stone path beneath him, the blade of the Lord Protector having never left its sheath.


	7. Chapter 7

Corvo wakes to cold sea water drenching his chest and face, making him splutter as the salt stings his eyes; when he manages to crack both open, blinking repeatedly as they tear, he is met with Jessamine’s assessing, judging gaze, housed in a massive portrait of the Empress that hangs framed amongst an expanse of dingy stone. He smells iron and then heat, realizes after a moment that the latter is from the lit brazier standing close to the chair he is strapped into and that the former is from the blood that has soaked into the concrete all around him. An Overseer’s music box grinds away nearby, and Corvo fights the lead in his limbs to twist in his bonds, turning his head as much as he’s able to take in his surroundings.

He knows where he is, and he should feel fear at that – but even now, with the hair on the side of his head matted with blood from the blow that had struck him unconscious, the only fear Corvo can immediately summon is for Jessamine and Emily. Threats to them and the Empire indeed – the Outsider’s words lie bitter on Corvo’s tongue as two figures step through the only door in his limited field of vision.

Corvo recognizes both of them – oh, _how_ he recognizes them – and his lips peel back from his teeth when Campbell and Burrows step into the light.

“I must applaud you, Corvo,” Burrows says as he slowly walks closer. The heels of his boots click sharply on the stained floor, distinct like gunfire. “Hiding the Outsider’s power for so long? It was cleverly done. Few suspected and even fewer believed, but you were not as circumspect with your means of travel as you should have been.” He passes out of Corvo’s sight, moving around the chair that Corvo is bound in. “I know you hired the Whalers in the wake of Daud’s death – it would have been an intelligent move in other circumstances. They _are_ useful tools, aren’t they?” There is a clatter of metal against metal, and Corvo fights to not flinch. He knows what’s coming.

“But your contract with them was all I needed to allow the Empress to begin to _doubt_. To begin to wonder if you were not as loyal as you appeared, away on your journey with the space of months between her and Dunwall. You remember how this works. Just the first seed of uncertainty… but more than enough to ease the way for the rest.”

Corvo tenses, clenches his jaw when he feels unfamiliar fingers on his own; if he strains, he can see where they’ve bound his hands to the arms of the chair. 

“Campbell would love to know how you bested Daud – heretic power resistant against power, perhaps?” Burrows pauses, as though expecting a response, and when none is forthcoming, he tuts and continues with, “Well. No matter – I’m sure you will enlighten us in due time.”

And with that, Burrows drives the heated end of the awl in his hand down, piercing the meat of the web between the index and thumb of Corvo’s left hand, perilously close to the Outsider’s Mark.

Corvo bites his teeth down hard over the scream in his chest until his jaw creaks with the strain and stares ahead, up at the portrait of Jessamine, as the scent of scorched meat and seared blood blooms in the dank air, and says _nothing_.

 

It is later – much later – by the time the guards throw him into what will, presumably, be his cell. The various pains that had faded to a background litany of hurt in the chair rebound into calamitous life with his hard impact to the ground, and Corvo endures until it crests enough for him to drag himself away from the cell door, away from the music that clutches at him with jointed, clattering fingers, searching for refuge from the ache its echoes hammer into his bones. He curls up in the quietest corner and closes his eyes, seeking what temporary solace he may find to face his situation with the clearest eyes he can muster.

 

The days blur together, and Corvo soon learns every inch of his filthy cell – from the stained, threadbare pallet to the rat holes that allow furred intruders. He has none of his possessions, not even his original clothes, and Corvo feels their loss in the bite of the cold as the temperature continues to fall. The Heart is gone, and Corvo hopes, sincerely (if rather futilely), that neither Burrows nor Campbell have realized what or who the Heart is – for Corvo has, by this point, ascertained what exactly Campbell and Burrows intend for him. It is very rare that any agents of the Outsider are captured, after all, given how clever and powerful most are. Corvo represents to them an opportunity, an untapped resource: like the whales that are hauled up from the sea and butchered on land, dying by inches for their oil. Corvo doesn’t linger too long on the thought. Contemplating the exact mechanisms of his inevitable death will do no-one any good.

Days bleed into weeks, weeks of silence in which Corvo _refuses_ to speak, sealing his lips over whatever words he could say – save once, when he wonders if the results of all of this will, somehow, make their way to Sokolov to be consumed in the man’s endless pursuit of the Outsider. Corvo’s laughter brings the guards running, and he can read the fear in their eyes when they see him, can hear the whispers wondering if he’s finally snapped, gone utterly mad. A small, selfish part of Corvo wishes that he had – perhaps all of this would be easier to bear.

 

And then – and then, one day (or night; it becomes difficult to tell) as Corvo lies on the floor of his cell, fighting back the pain in his body and listening to the boots of the guards retreat back to their posts, he realizes that there is something _else_ – something unfamiliar that has been added to the texture of the monotony that now colors his days red.

With difficulty, Corvo raises his head, seeking out the source of the sound, this measured ticking that is so familiar and _yet_ –

There is a lump lying at the head of his pallet and Corvo’s fingers shake with more than exhaustion and pain as he closes his hand around the Heart.

“Bodyguard,” Daud murmurs, and Corvo closes his eyes, makes a noise in response that is caught somewhere between a sob and a laugh and a sigh of relief. “Attano.”

“ _How_ ,” Corvo whispers, and his voice cracks with it, splinters along the edges like brittle, dried bones from its disuse.

“The Outsider works in mysterious ways,” Daud’s Heart replies, and Corvo almost laughs at the deliberate echo of their first days. He’s glad the noise never makes it past his lips – it would have emerged more broken and rotten than he thinks he could stand. “It wasn’t easy. Transversals aren’t exactly safe anymore without eyes and ears. I had to find another way.”

Corvo can hear the implied apology for taking so long in the statement and in the way the gravel in Daud’s voice lacks the sharp edges its stones could have borne; he smiles despite himself and the way it splits his lip open again, part of him utterly relieved, and slips into unconsciousness between one breath and the next.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which it's probably only up from here and corvo and daud get to know each other

It is not easy – but it is _better_ , Corvo no longer trapped within the futile circle of his own thoughts. His wounds need time to heal (or at least to scab over) despite the apparent durability that the Outsider’s Mark seems to grant, and in those interim moments, when there is nothing but the pain, the hunger, and the rats, Corvo talks with Daud.

“What do you remember of Serkonos?” Corvo asks once, and Daud’s Heart is silent for long moments before he speaks, slowly weaving together a piecemeal, patchwork narrative of the towns Daud had visited or lived in. It isn’t until the third new place that Corvo realizes that Daud must have been very young – only a child – to have moved so much in his little time before coming to Dunwall. He doesn’t give voice to the thought. It would have been Daud’s choice to speak so frankly, rather than to leave it to quiet implication, and perhaps the something in Corvo that longs for white beaches and the glare of bright sunlight off of the waves can understand that desire to not mar these memories with whatever harsh, adult reality they had also held. Corvo talks about the Blade Verbena instead and even manages a smile when Daud’s Heart mocks him gently for it, calling him something the noble officers must have truly feared – a self-made commoner who had more than proved his worth with the edge of the sword and gained equal rank amongst them for his trouble.

Corvo asks about the Whalers another day, and Daud’s Heart returns after a pause, “What in particular?” When Corvo asks, later, partly facetiously, how Daud told the Whalers apart, his Heart replies, very seriously, “The bond, Attano. I have better things to do than to sit down to memorize a list of tics my men have in uniform.” He pauses, then adds, “I only do that for the ones where the power doesn’t really take,” and Corvo laughs despite the pain from his broken ribs. The conversation meanders that day, wavering between recollections of the culture shock the both of them had felt upon arriving in Dunwall to the things they had learned in the time since then.

“Did you really attend the Academy? Or was that just rumor?” Corvo asks, and Daud makes a faint, sourceless noise of derision.

“Yes. I studied human anatomy, physiology, and chemistry for the few seasons I was there. It wasn’t too much of a waste. Those subjects and the law classes came in use after I left.”

“Why did you go?” Corvo asks, then closes his mouth over the rest of the statement – that if Daud had stayed at the Academy, perhaps the world they’d be living in would be very different indeed.

Daud’s Heart says nothing, for long enough that Corvo nearly falls asleep in the silence, before it answers, “Do you remember what it was like when you first landed? The way they’d stare at you and check their coin purses as if they couldn’t be sure – the sneers they gave and the way they’d change their tunes during Fugue?” Corvo makes a soft noise of affirmation, and Daud’s Heart continues, flatly, “I entered on merit – a Serkonan kid barely into adulthood without a history, whose mind rivaled the intellects of the Dunwall men that had slaved before their textbooks for the mere chance of attending. It was like that,” and falls silent.

Corvo stares at the cracked stone wall in front of his nose, mind turning over the pieces of the man Daud had given him – before uncurling enough to lay one hand over Daud’s Heart, feeling the ticking underneath his fingertips, faint as it’s been rendered by Holger’s Device.

He cannot bring himself to speak after that, and so there is nothing other than silence for the rest of the day.

 

Corvo’s body eventually fails him – several of his wounds become infected and fever alternately burns him to ash and freezes him to the bone; when he reaches the point of raving, screaming himself hoarse at shadows that don’t exist, the guards enter his cell and pour Sokolov’s elixir down his throat, covering his mouth and nose and smothering him silent until he swallows. There are panicked whispers of plague, and Corvo clutches spasmodically at Daud’s Heart, trying to hide him from the guards in one of his fleeting moments of lucidity, and it isn’t until hours after the cell door has clanged shut behind them that Corvo realizes that he’s been grasping his Heart hard enough to feel the gears labor underneath the muscle, hitching Daud’s voice in its litany of, _It’s alright; only the Void-touched can see me_ when his fingers tighten.

(At the height of his fever, Corvo finally, _finally_ gives voice to what has plagued him since his arrest and incarceration; he pleads with Daud’s Heart, _begs_ him to tell him if he will die here in Coldridge, if it is already too late for Jessamine and Emily. All Daud’s Heart can say is, _I don’t know; I don’t know_ , for he cannot tell a lie beyond his own self-delusions. When Corvo plunges into wracking shivers, Daud’s Heart tells Corvo to hold him close so his clammy body can drink up what heat Daud’s Heart can give, and Daud calls him, “Poor bastard,” roughly for his lack of knowledge of what else to say and falls silent, waiting for a response that will never come.)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which corvo falls a very long distance

Corvo’s fever breaks in the late night of the end of his eighth week at Coldridge, and for the first time since his Marking, his dreams are blank and deep, empty of the Outsider or the touch of the Void.

“You look like shit,” Daud’s Heart tells him frankly when he finally, _finally_ wakes; Corvo’s ragged laugh scrapes weakly at his raw throat and he doesn’t mention how tired Daud sounds as well.

“How long?” Corvo asks instead; his muscles and half-healed wounds protest with his movements as he shifts on the pallet, attempting to sit up.

“Five days in fever, three in rest. They’re still waiting to see if you start bleeding from the eyes,” Daud’s Heart returns, and Corvo almost laughs again, thinking of the heavy weight of Jessamine’s ignorant betrayal as solid on his chest as Coldridge’s stone walls.

“Fitting tears,” is all he murmurs in reply, and Daud’s Heart is silent in response. “How long of a reprieve do you think I’ll be allowed before we return to the daily grind?” Corvo can’t keep the sardonic note out of his voice when he asks; his time in fever dreams has only reinforced to him his prison. He cannot promise himself that he will not break – he will resist as long as he may, but he is under no desperate illusions that he will not die here one day, when the Abbey and the Spymaster have wrung the last secret they may out of his vivisected corpse.

“I don’t know,” and the measured pace of Daud’s voice captures Corvo’s attention.

“What is it?”

Daud’s Heart is silent for several, ticking moments before a sound much like a sigh (or the passing of a wave) rushes through Corvo’s ears. “My men are not… unaware of where we are or of what has happened. I don’t have any details to give you – they can’t exactly get in touch with me in here, after all, but the bond…” He trails off for a moment, slipping into silence before concluding, “They’re planning something. I can tell.”

Corvo cannot help the way his spirits leap at that, even as he berates himself for foolishly hoping – he shouldn’t torment himself with possibilities given how grave his situation is.

And yet…

“Are they always so loyal?” Corvo mumbles wryly; Daud laughs.

“When their livelihood is on the line? Apparently so,” he returns, and Corvo thinks of anguished dark eyes and the bitterly resigned pragmatism the heir to the Knife’s legacy had fallen into, the delusions that she herself had half let herself believe, and says nothing, sparing Daud by acknowledging the former man’s unspoken desire to not make the reality they were currently trapped in more painful.

Corvo rests.

He cannot call it recovery – merely the physical equivalent of catching his breath as much as he’s able to; the constant grinding press of Holger’s Device upon his nerves is draining at best. (“Does it affect you much?” Corvo asks at some point, or perhaps he doesn’t actually ask the question, drifting between the exhaustion of consciousness and the disconnect of dreams as he is – but Daud answers anyway, or Corvo dreams that he does, and the voice of the former Knife of Dunwall is sober as he says, slowly, “Not in the same way.”)

There are guards that pass by on patrol – Corvo can ascertain that a few of them are meant to check on his condition, but more often than not, they outright ignore him or merely take a cursory glance inside the cell to ascertain that he’s still breathing and leave him otherwise be. Daud’s comment about the guards waiting to see if he’d die of plague makes more sense, now. He wonders how long it will take for news of his improved condition to make its way to Burrows and Campbell at this rate, how devoted they still are to tormenting the fallen Lord Protector, to punishing the heretic plucked from the side of the Empress.

In the end, he never finds out.

 

One day (or night; it becomes hard to tell) Corvo awakens from his shallow sleep to an Overseer standing before his cell, his hands folded at the small of his back and his scowling visage staring at him in white and gold. Corvo sits up slowly, wary at the man’s presence – this is something new, something different. The Overseers have never come to gawp at him before this, perhaps forbidden to by Campbell or too afraid of being tempted by what he represents, the implications of his existence as he is right now, Marked and chained, forsaken by his life’s devotion and good for little more than meat after his oil is drained.

But the Overseer does nothing – nothing until, when Corvo shifts, his hand brushes against Daud’s Heart, nothing until Daud says, voice slightly incredulous, “ _Robin_?” – it is not until then that the Overseer moves, and then only to shift to one side, his hands unfolding from behind his back and going to the lock of Corvo’s cell.

It clicks.

The door creaks open, and the Overseer backs away from it, his head turning to look down the hall that Corvo’s cell is in.

Frozen in surprise, Corvo is still for a too-long moment – before Daud’s Heart hisses at him, “ _Move!_ ” and then Corvo is pushing his aching body to its feet, beating back the pain and the lingering weakness and the dizzy vestiges of his illness and the hunger clawing in his belly to _move_.

“One of yours?” he murmurs almost rhetorically to Daud as he grits his teeth against the growing pressure of Holger’s Device; Daud’s reply is merely a grunt and neither of them say anything else as the Overseer pulls a decidedly non-requisition dagger out of his boot, handing it to Corvo, giving the long shadows of the hall a significant look, and straightening, linking his hands behind his back once more as he resumes his patrol down the hall – but not before he kicks Corvo’s cell door closed. It won’t fool any of the guards that actually do take the time to look in on Corvo, but it is enough to fool a passing glance, and Corvo clenches his hand into a fist around the hilt of the knife, dropping into a crouch and perking up his ears to listen for any intersecting prison patrols, the dagger held in a reverse grip.

“Paper,” Daud whispers, and Corvo automatically looks down at Daud’s Heart in his left hand, alarmed by the weakness in the other’s voice. “The music,” Daud adds shortly, a brusque explanation, then, “The hilt,” before falling completely silent.

Corvo alternates his gaze between Daud’s Heart and the dagger in his hand before placing the hilt of the latter between his teeth, biting down upon it as he tucks his shirt into his pants, rolling down the waistband to secure the lot against the weight he’d lost before dropping Daud’s Heart down his collar to settle, ticking, against his hipbone. Not the most dignified method of travel, perhaps, but it would do.

Corvo spits out the knife, examines it more closely, and ascertains, after a moment of fiddling, that the pommel of the blade is screwed on and that the hilt is hollow; he fishes within with his fingertips and drags out two pieces of paper, folded to fit. The first gives instructions and an admonition to stay alive, signed by a mysterious ‘friend’ (Corvo thinks that whoever this ‘friend’ is, they’re certainly a member of the nobility with copperplate like that), and the second reads, shortly, _Play along for now. We will meet once you’re both out_ in familiar square capitals.

“A temporary alliance?” Corvo breathes to Daud as he replaces both notes and takes up the blade once again.

“Careful of watching eyes,” Daud replies, and Corvo tightens his grip on the borrowed dagger and makes his way down the hall, leaning out cautiously to take inventory of the situation. For once he is glad of Burrows and Campbell housing him in the solitary B-wing of the prison; it would be more heavily guarded by Overseers perhaps, but the layout of its rooms was more linear.

He chokes out the first guard, dragging his unconscious body away into a dim corner. The second goes the way of the first, Corvo skirting afterwards past an Overseer bearing a music box, the man walking a circuit of the room in counterpoint to the guards Corvo had neutralized. As much as Corvo would like to, he cannot remove those Overseers that carry copies of Holger's Device – the absence of one would be too easily noticed.

He is glad, as he carefully edges from shadow to shadow, of the inspections that Jessamine had semi-regularly made of Coldridge, for Corvo is familiar with both the floorplans and patrols of the guards from being at her side through all of them. (He ignores the pang in his chest for how much things have changed.) There are more guards and far more Overseers than when he’d last toured, of course, but there are only so many places patrols can be and only so much patience that the average member of the Watch has for hours of endless circuits. He knows this much, and Corvo loiters patiently in the lee of a column for men to finish chatting with each other before making his move to slip past both.

Corvo swipes a pistol from a standing rack of weapons; then there are a few boxes to climb, which he manages with shaking arms. His reward is a handful of bullets stolen from another rack and a blessed moment of silence separate from the grind of Holger’s Device.

“Is Robin your only man on the inside for this?” Corvo asks before biting down on the hilt of the dagger to free his hands; he loads the pistol with automatic motions, habit returning to him with the feel of the heft of the gun. The rest of the bullets he drops down his shirt as Daud answers with, “Likely so. Robin’s the best at imitation for the sake of infiltration, but she’s not geared for the ruckus that would be raised if we openly slaughtered our way out – we’ll have to escape on our own. With the help of this so-called ‘friend’, likely.”

Corvo hesitates in surprise over the identity of the disguised Whaler that had freed them before venturing, “Will she be alright on her own?”

“I trained her, didn’t I? Power never took deep with her; she’s used to relying on her own strength and wiles. Now get going; some idiot soldier is going to find one of the bodies and then we’ll all be fucked.”

Corvo shakes his head but moves to the nearest door on silent feet; he kneels to peer through the keyhole, wary of what he could be walking into – and finds himself looking right at the arse end of a guard who’s bent over a railing, peering at something below.

Corvo rolls his eyes, because of _course_ , stands, yanks open the door, and unceremoniously drags the man backwards back through by the arm he has around his neck, shutting it behind them as he waits for the other’s futile struggles to cease. He leaves him near the weapons rack and spends a moment more loitering at the door, listening to hear if any alerts had been called, before opening it once more and stepping out.

Crossing the Yard is made slightly more complicated by the patrols of Overseers and guards both above and below, but Corvo soon closes the door to the interrogation chamber behind him, letting out the breath caught in his chest – only to have his next (laden with the scent of red-painted iron and the memory of burning flesh) stick in its place.

“Focus,” Daud’s Heart whispers, and it’s enough to make Corvo’s shoulders straighten; he crosses the room on bare feet and finds the safe in question unlocked – and the clockwork explosive, sitting atop a pile of very familiar, neatly-labeled audiographs.

Corvo stares for a few moments at the transcripts of the torment he’d endured – before snatching the lot of them out of the safe. It might not be the only copies of the information that Burrows and Campbell had garnered from him, could only be a fraction of the true amount of data, but Corvo dumps the heavy paper into the brazier that is always lit and watches it all burn into ash. Anything that he could prevent from leaving these four walls, anything that he could keep from falling into the wrong hands, is for the better. He cannot afford to compromise his Empire, his Empress, his Emily with whatever evidence of heresy that has been found – he refuses to implicate them by his care.

He picks up both the explosive and the dagger; after a moment’s brief hesitation, he murmurs a, “Sorry,” to Daud’s Heart before dropping the bomb down his shirt as well. Luckily for all involved, it doesn’t land on the other.

From the interrogation room it is a straight path to the front gate – the guards and Overseers notwithstanding – but the knowledge of freedom so close is enough to galvanize Corvo into motion, enough to make his tired feet move forward. He is lucky: the Overseer and one of the guards in the courtyard have apparently taken something of a shine to each other; they circle the yard, the Overseer giving the music box he’s strapped to the occasional desultory crank. The rest of the time they spend talking Scriptures to each other, relating them to anecdotes that demonstrate the righteousness of the Abbey of the Everyman, and it is child’s play to slip past.

The control room is more difficult, but Corvo huddles in a corner directly underneath the viewing windows of the long booth until the guard patrolling the exterior turns his back to him inopportunely at the end of his patrol route, which gives Corvo the opening he needs to choke him out.

“Pipes,” Daud’s Heart whispers, and Corvo crouches after he eases the guard’s body to the floor, turning his eyes to the wall and tracking the lines up to where they run parallel to the ceiling, trying to determine if there would be enough room for a person above them.

He waits where he is for seconds longer, counting the steps of the man in the booth behind the window as the man paces from one side to another – there is the scrape of a lighter at one point before he turns to walk away, footsteps slower and more measured as he smokes, and Corvo breaks from his limited cover to leap, latching onto one of the riveted joints of the pipes and hauling himself upwards against the countdown of seconds until the guard turns back around, time measured in the passage of footsteps.

He pulls his feet up out of his line of sight before the timer in his head runs down to zero, and Corvo breathes a silent sigh of relief before he scales the last bit at a less punishing pace, his arms aching. Crossing the length of the room above, Corvo crouches before the great door to the entry hall. The control mechanisms to open the thing are likely inside the control booth, but merely opening the door without the subsequent arrival of a guard or Overseer smacked of revealing himself, and so he waits. It is something he has become good at, over the years he has spent as Jessamine’s shadow as she’d moved through the organized tumult of her life.

The door ponderously creaks, beginning to move, and Corvo instantly snaps to attention, mentally gauging the rate at which it shifts before looking past it at the way beyond. A guard and an Overseer are entering, but there is only one guard manning the controls on the other side, and Corvo collects himself, getting his feet underneath him as the door starts to slide closed – and flings himself through the thinning gap, hitting the floor with his shoulder and rolling back onto his feet even as the solitary guard shouts in alarm, going for his weapons; Corvo feels his mouth stretch into a satisfied grin, because the noise is entirely covered by the cacophonous grind of the door closing behind him, the other guards and Overseers too preoccupied with the arriving duo to register one figure slipping through above their heads; Corvo sacrifices none of his momentum, vaulting over the pipes at the foot of the overlook that houses the control panel and running up the wall just far enough to catch his hand around the railing, yanking himself up and over the rest of the way to swarm the guard, clambering right over the bank of switches and indicator lights to bring the pommel of his borrowed dagger down upon the man’s temple.

The guard drops. Corvo’s feet hit the floor barely a second after, and he falls into a crouch, alert for the sound of any alarms – before he sways, planting a hand on the concrete between his knees and pulling air into his lungs against a surge of shaky lightheadedness, adrenaline making his head swim.

He’s moving again the next moment, though, painfully aware of how little time they have, already pressing the hilt of the knife between his teeth and slipping the pistol into the folded waistband of his trousers as he pulls one arm backwards out of its sleeve to fetch the bomb from where it’s settled against his stomach. Luckily for everyone, the arming mechanism is easy enough for Corvo to decipher; he places the bomb on the ground before the exterior doors and retreats all the way back to the consoles, dragging the unconscious guard with him to hopefully spare the man the damage of any flying shrapnel, already counting down the seconds in his head to detonation.

Three – two – one – and the explosion is amazingly, terrifyingly, exhilaratingly loud but Corvo is running even before the smoke clears, certainly even before the ringing fades from his ears, and he breaks out into the blinding light of day, teetering to a stop at the edge of an almost dizzying height at the end of the drawn bridge, the water of the moat gleaming below – the sewer entrance –

“ _Jump_ , you castrated son of a brined hagfish – !” Daud’s Heart snaps at him, his voice somehow cutting straight through all the noise in Corvo’s ears, and, as Corvo turns slightly in place, trying to sight where the sewers _are_ , adds, “The guards!”  
  
Corvo jumps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this chapter and the next initially as one really long one and then... realized it was Too Long, so if it splits a bit awkward, that's why, aha,
> 
> also robin is a bit of a referential pun to fe:a's protag :"D


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which an escape is made

Hitting the water from that height is anything but pleasant, and it nearly knocks all the air out of his lungs, reawakens the myriad of pains his body bears – but he keeps moving, because the guards would undoubtedly be close behind given the flashiness of his escape. Daud’s Heart murmurs to him, “Twenty five meters ahead, 10 o’clock upwards”; when Corvo pulls himself out of the water, he finds himself right next to the rusting metal gate of the entrance to the sewers – which has been helpfully left propped open by either a Whaler or the enterprising ‘friend’ behind the other note.

Corvo slips inside, the shouts of the guards and the grinding of music boxes no-doubt nipping at his heels, runs down the tunnel immediately within and yanks open the door at the end of it, bolting through – the sounds of pursuit and blaring alarms slowly fades as Corvo flees, a small measure of hearing and strength returning to his limbs with every step as he puts distance between himself and the music of Holger’s Device.

Finally, _finally_ , when there are no more sounds of pursuit, finally, _finally_ , when Corvo slows from his run into a jog and then into a walk and then stops entirely, one hand braced on the slimy wall to keep himself from falling down, _finally_ , Corvo exhales a sigh of relief. He has escaped. Somehow, against all odds, against the precautions that Burrows and Campbell had taken, he is _free_.

“Looking like a half-drowned rat, with most of your body open wound, clothes rags, fresh off fever, and entering the belly of sewers filled with rot and the dead in the heart of the winter months,” Daud’s Heart adds acerbically. “It’ll be a fair guess as to whether exposure or infection kills you first.”

Corvo laughs, ragged and weak where he (barely) stands. “Is your new hobby creating more and more unusual insults to apply to me?” Corvo replies, then tips his head back and slowly straightens, wincing, as Daud’s Heart replies, “If it will get your attention and get you to act, then yes.”

Corvo huffs out a breath caught somewhere between amusement and exasperation but doesn’t deny the effectiveness of the methodology, easing himself back into motion instead. He flexes his Marked hand, testing the strength of the limb before clenching it into a fist, calling upon the Outsider’s power, the slice of the Void he now carries within him, sighting down the path forward flight would take him before releasing the tension of the energy without activating it; it dissipates in wisps of smoke, and Corvo briefly tastes whiskey and cigars on the back of his tongue when he breathes it in, the contrast between the harsh malt and the quality of the tobacco instantly bringing him back to memories of time spent in secret with Jessamine, sharing a bottle between them as they smoked and drank and laughed.

He keeps moving, opening and shutting doors behind him, hiding when he has to to avoid the guards and Overseers that are slowly trickling into the sewers in pursuit of him, but Daud’s Heart murmurs directions to him as he navigates, guides him true. At one point Corvo comes out into a part of the tunnels that is closer to the surface, ceiling broken enough to let a few beams of sunlight fall through; the light catches on the gleam of something _red_ ahead of him, and Corvo recognizes the vial of Sokolov’s elixir after a heart-stopping moment’s worth of startled fear.

There is a note underneath.

 

Corvo eyeballs it as he picks up the vial, unscrewing the top, reads through the promises from their ‘friend’, absorbs the information of the cache of weapons waiting for him and the boatman waiting to ferry him at the end of his journey. He murmurs, “Rather trusting of the ability of this man Samuel, aren’t they, to leave his name out where any could find it,” before taking a careful pull off of the contents of the vial. His stomach twists uncomfortably at the introduction of anything into its emptiness, and Corvo breathes in carefully even as some measure of stability returns to his center of balance.

He finishes the elixir without losing the contents of his belly to the nauseating richness of the liquid, the flavor caught somewhere between oily meat stew and sweet-sour shellfish, grimaces at its bitter aftertaste, sets the vial back on the crate it had been picked up from, and carefully stretches, running probing fingers over the scarred-over marks of smaller wounds. It is no fix, nothing permanent to rely upon, but it is enough for now, will get him the rest of the way through the sewers to safety.

There is a noise, the clatter of a key in a lock and the distorted echo of voices, and Corvo doesn’t even think, just _moves_ in a flutter of sodden cloth and the Outsider’s power, clambering atop the cage that the two watchmen are passing through below even before he fully registers the threat; he bites down on the beginning of a slightly-hysterical laugh when he realizes _what_ the men are talking about (“– saw him fight, once; took down three Watchmen at the same time – ”), all unaware of the threat they’re singing praises to directly overhead. Corvo watches and waits until they’re both past, the more experienced of the two turned aside to lock the barred door behind them, to fling himself from atop the cage onto the younger, laying him out flat underneath his weight.

“What the - !” the other starts, turning – before Corvo bounces him off of the bars, putting him into a chokehold until his stunned struggles cease.

Briskly, Corvo searches both of them, leaving anything personal but divesting them of their handkerchiefs – each clean enough, especially when compared to the floor Corvo had been treading upon. A bit of judiciously-applied teeth has them reduced to strips in little time, which Corvo uses to wrap up his feet as best he may before filching the better-fitting pair of boots off of one of the guards and the coat from the other. After a thoughtful pause, he manhandles both men up onto the crate that the note had been on, packing them close together against the chill and out of the path of any passing vermin.

Then he climbs back atop the cage, crosses it, and drops down on the other side.

“It is good to have pockets again,” Corvo remarks as he transfers the contents of his shirt to the coat, tucking Daud’s Heart away into its breast pocket.

“I did not expect you to take me so pragmatically,” Daud replies flatly. Corvo almost laughs; instead he plucks three five-gold pieces off of a crate he strides by.

“Would you rather I died of exposure?”

“You’re one of those that always has handfuls of odd bits and ends in your pockets, aren’t you,” Daud says instead. “Magpie,” and Corvo does laugh that time.

 

There are rats in the sewers, which Corvo isn’t surprised by – he skirts by those that he can with a mincing sort of caution, often pausing to analyze the best vertical escape route if he needs to evade their claws. He’s unsure of the condition of the city, its deterioration in the face of the plague, and there are Pandyssian rats amongst the swarms in the sewers, huge aggressive things that are not afraid of the threat he represents.

So Corvo is cautious.

“Do your Whalers use these tunnels?” he asks Daud at one point, pulling water-slick locks of hair away from his face. He tries to not think about the way he must smell, or about the open wounds on his body that are now drenched. That will be for later, when he’s someplace safe.

“Not often. Some do. Others don’t. I train them to use the rooftops – there’s usually a clearer view. And people are hardly conditioned to look up.” He pauses as Corvo takes a moment to carefully negotiate his way past a trap, the tripwire gleaming in the light of the occasional lantern placed in an innocuous corner. “But some take the sewers because that’s what they’re accustomed to. Others because the power didn’t take and they still needed a way to get around unseen.”

“They’re not the only ones who use these ways,” Corvo says. “Doesn’t seem like much a guarantee of anonymity.”

“Who would want to go hunting down here if they could help it? Man isn’t meant to crawl underground.”

“Is that what they taught you at the Academy?”

Despite the evidence of other people, Corvo encounters no-one else (save the odd corpse, which earns a momentary flicker of pity from Corvo – to die in a place like this… and yet, perhaps there was a sort of peace to be found here, a solace accessible to those incapable of flying as he and Daud’s men did.) The cache of weapons is untouched; Corvo takes the time to avail himself of the other clothes in the trunk, exchanging the threadbare bloodstained rags on his body for the garments within. They’re of good quality, though none are new, sitting too tight across his shoulders and too short at his ankles. Corvo is still glad of them, even as he snorts softly when he runs fingers over the material. Perhaps they’re the castoffs of the noble that had so fervently pledged their allegiance and alliance with Corvo.

Not matter what qualms Corvo may have, though, the weapons that are also packed into the trunk are without peer; Corvo carefully examines the well-oiled mechanisms of the hand crossbow and hums approvingly as he tests the give of its draw. Much more quiet than the pistol – lacking its power by necessity, of course, but useful precisely because of it.

“My Whalers have better,” Daud murmurs as Corvo considers the bolts that have also been included.

“Do they?” Corvo replies, curiosity piqued. “A crossbow?”

“Mounted on the wrist. Leaves a hand free.”

“But the power?”

“Spring-loaded,” Daud replies, and there’s a hint of pride in his voice as he adds, “One of the Whalers came up with the mechanism.”

Corvo makes a low sound, impressed and absently wondering if he could get his hands on one, before giving the other weapon in the trunk the same scrutiny. It’s a strange thing, a length of hilt hardly longer than the span of his hand but very heavy for its size – and Corvo makes a noise of satisfaction when he figures out the mechanism, flipping the hilt of the sword around his thumb to unsheathe the blade from inside it, steel unfolding with a muted whisper.

The silence from Daud is tinted impressed for a moment – before, “Shit blade for parrying. All the joins’ll make it weak.”

“It’ll hardly matter if I’m not spotted in the first place,” Corvo returns, laughing despite himself at the other’s sour attitude as he lets gravity sheathe the blade again. “I’ll be the one using it, however, not you or one of your Whalers, and a blade like this suits my style better.” Daud grumbles to himself as Corvo unlocks the gate to the Main Pumping Station, slipping through like a well-outfitted ghost.

His reputation precedes him once again, it seems; Corvo lingers above the drop down on the last leg of the journey, listening to the guards warn each other about him and what he’s capable of before sliding onto the first of the small series of ledges. He waits until the men have parted ways from each other to walk their respective patrols before slipping down the rest of the way and choking out the one remaining man by the fire; he leaves him in the shadows and Blinks up to the pipes that run the length of the awkward room they’re in, watching carefully as the Watch shift and move about in aborted little circles of what little walkway space they have below. He waits until they all have their backs turned to slip back to the ground, moving on into the light.

The outlet of the sewer is close now – just a quick dash past open space, his running footsteps covered by the clatter of the train above and the blare of the loudspeaker (“The traitor and former Lord Protector, Corvo Attano, has temporarily escaped custody. We urge citizens to take caution as the Watch works to recapture the felon”) and he is emerging into watery sunlight, the air replete with the scent of river water meeting the edge of the sea, a heavy brine made ponderous with rot. Perhaps not the most auspicious of beginnings, but the man that stands on the shore next to a boat is reassuringly real, comfortably weathered and bundled in fisherman’s wool.

“Samuel, then?” Corvo asks as he approaches, and the tone of the other man’s voice is nothing but frank amazement as he replies.

“That’s right. They said you’d be comin’ out here, but I can still hardly believe it – here you are, in one piece.” Corvo smiles, a little touched by the man’s blunt honesty. “You’re a very lucky fellow, Lord Attano. Or a very skilled one. Maybe both. I’ll take you upriver to meet the men behind all this whenever you’re ready.”

Corvo takes a moment to stare out at the vast expanse of the sea – before his view of the water is obscured by a whaling ship, its prey already trussed up, as it pulls into the waterway to head towards its port. It’s a rather unsubtle reminder of the fate he’d narrowly escaped and what he still has to lose, and Corvo takes a bracing breath before turning back towards Samuel.

“Let’s go.”


	11. Chapter 11

Samuel is pleasant company and amicable to chat even with Corvo sitting across from him with a crossbow held across his lap and his borrowed dagger resting on the bench beside him. “The plague’s been rough on the city – things don’t seem to be getting better and the Watch looks like it’s doubled in size – real mean, these new boys, too. After the elixir, maybe, since the dead keep piling up,” Samuel says. “Overseers out on patrol now as well – makes everyone real twitchy, hearin’ those hounds and their handlers trompin’ about. Rumors of witchcraft, you know, people disappearing, plants blooming outta season.” Corvo watches the shoreline, lets the words wash over him. “It’s got the Abbey on edge. No-one knows what the plague’s been bringin’ out in people. Guess they figure better safe than sorry. ‘Specially with all this business with the Empress… throwing the dead into the Flooded District? Just ain’t right.”

Corvo’s head turns at that, attention snared, alarm flaring in his chest.

“What about the Empress?”

Samuel, to his credit, doesn’t flinch. “Right, forgot you wouldn’t know. It’s one of the latest orders from the Tower: the bodies of plague victims are bein’ packed up and shipped off to the Flooded District. Supposedly, it’ll keep the plague from spreading, but it’s made a lotta people unhappy. Can’t even give their loved ones a proper burial anymore.”

“I see,” Corvo says neutrally; he sits back as Samuel keeps talking, half an ear on what the man is saying and the rest of him focused upon turning over the idea of Jessamine ordering the dead to be left in the Flooded District to rot. The condition of Dunwall had certainly deteriorated in his time spent within Coldridge’s walls – but to the extent that the Empress would order such a blanket, coldly pragmatic proposal? It does not sit well with the memory of the woman Corvo holds on to.

Samuel pilots them to the Old Port District – and in it, the Hounds Pit Pub. “Half the district’s gone from plague or fear, you know – since the Financial District’s just a stone’s throw away,” Samuel says. “Bad omen, havin’ it so close. The pub’s closed to business seeing as how there’s hardly anyone around, but it serves fair enough for Admiral Havelock and the rest. Best head up and meet them.” Samuel eases his boat to a stop at the dock, hopping out nimbly despite his apparent age to tie her up. “If anyone can make heads or tails about what’s happening up in the Tower, it’ll be them.”

Corvo disembarks as Samuel starts off across the yard towards the pub; he lingers along the shoreline instead of following the boatman, taking a proper look at the place as he walks, placing one hand against his breast pocket.

“The boatman seems honest enough,” he murmurs; Daud snorts acidically.

“A good set of hands to navigate the river. Wonder what lies they fed him to get his help.” Corvo doesn’t miss the flicker of shadow and void he catches from the roof of the pub; the Whalers are aware of where he is, then. Good.

Corvo skirts the outbuilding that is emitting a frankly alarming array of sounds, rounding the pub itself to look up at its second floor. With a surreptitious glance about him, Corvo hauls himself up to it by making use of a few stacked crates and a canopy, lightly treading the moulding about the building and slipping through one of the open windows – only to startle the woman immediately inside.

“Oh for the love of – you – ” She pauses and seems to look Corvo over. “ _You_ must be Corvo Attano. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you made an entrance like that, then.” She seems more amused than alarmed, now, not likely to cause a scene, so Corvo dips into an apologetic, gallant bow and slips past her.

He walks a circuit of the servant’s quarters and the second floor, getting a feel for the lay of the rooms, before descending the stairs to the ground floor of the pub, footsteps slowing and lingering as voices rise up to him. Corvo finds his lip curling at the content of the conversation (“The reality is that we need men killed – ”); was he meant to be the sharp end of a blade for these men, then?

“Rather more the line of work for the Whalers, one would think,” he says in an undertone to Daud. “How much has Billie told them?”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to ask her yourself soon enough,” Daud replies.

 

The two men at the bar introduce themselves as Admiral Havelock and Treavor Pendleton, and Corvo holds his tongue as they spin golden lies about the good he could do for the throne – they tell him that the rule is rotten from within and that it is time to cleanse the decay, to purge the wretched from their seats of power. No more will the Empress curtail the precious ration of elixir, no more will the nobles of the Tower cover their ears, dancing at lavish parties instead of listening to the starving cries of those abandoned by the Empire. No longer will those that speak out be spirited away into the night to never be seen again. The Empress will fall alongside her entire corrupt Parliament and the system that allowed their neglect to ruin Dunwall and its people.

Corvo says nothing, for there is nothing to say: he already sees what role he is meant to play in this conspiracy. And, perhaps, were he another man in another situation, he would have gladly grasped the chance to topple the Kaldwin line. Were he another man in another time, perhaps he would have joined these men for his lack of a better choice.

But this is not then and he is not that man; instead Corvo inclines his head to both when they are finished speaking and takes the door back outside, glad that there had been a flicker of fear and apprehension in their eyes when he had arrived in their midst, footsteps quiet and from the stairs that led to the very places they slept.

Piero, in comparison, is almost laughably simple in his motivations – his scientific endeavors are funded by the men within. He is a brilliant man; Corvo can see that much merely by looking at the strange array of tools and blueprints and notes strewn across every surface. It is not a surprise that Piero had been the one to build the weapons at Corvo’s side, but the mask that Piero fastens on him… the metal smells of salt water; and the lenses are blurry like seeing through waves before Piero adjusts them; and the Mark on the back of Corvo’s left hand thrums softly as the visage settles on his features, comfortable like a second skin.

“They always said genius walked hand in hand with madness,” Daud whispers, and Piero breaks off mid-word, eyes blinking at Corvo from behind thick glass.

“Did you say something, Corvo?”

And Corvo shakes his head, ignores the cold shiver that chills his blood.

 

“There’s no Mark on his hand,” Corvo says as he walks out into the yard, the mask placed into a pocket.

“Sometimes – ” and Daud’s voice is strange, the stones in it uncertain with his recounting of things that could be nothing more than legend. “It’s said sometimes people just… wander in. If they’re searching for something, if they look too hard. Like the dreamers, that old tale.” Corvo nods to Samuel where the older man is standing against the shore then scales a wall with a deft scramble, walking along the length of it as though it were solid ground and not less than a half-meter wide width of masonry. He is unaware of Samuel’s eyes on his back as he leaps for the balcony grating that connects to storage on the second floor; Corvo’s thoughts are preoccupied instead with a Serkonan legend of two lovers separated by circumstance, who met every night in their dreams. When one became engaged by order of their father, the lovers dreamt so deeply and so sweetly of each other that their souls left their bodies seeking each other – and so they died at the same hour, fleeing the world that would not allow their union in pursuit of a kinder Void, hand-in-hand.

 

He asks the red-haired girl – Cecelia, as she introduces herself – for rags, hot water, and bandages, smiling as kindly as he can at her; she is as timid as a mouse. He helps her carry the water to the attic, where his rooms are, apparently, and Daud’s voice is unhesitant as he instructs Corvo in the preparation of a salve for his wounds from the water, a dusty bottle of medicinal herbs Corvo had filched from the second floor, and some tubers dug from the mud along the shoreline, outside. Corvo leaves the mixture to cool as he strips to the waist, laying the contents of his pockets out along the table; the water in the smaller bucket that he dips the rags into soon becomes grey with removed dirt and blood.

The arrival of the Whalers doesn’t surprise him – he’d been waiting for them since he’d first seen them outside – and Daud greets the two that appear in flickers of ripples and void by name.

“Billie. Thomas.”

There’s a change of clothes held in the hands of the Whaler in blue, and Corvo could almost laugh for the solicitous way they’re handed to him. He trades Thomas his borrowed dagger, to be returned to Robin with thanks, and Billie regards his ragged form with crossed arms and a twist to her mouth.

“I’ll make the payments I missed once I have access to my accounts again,” Corvo offers lightly, and the expression on Billie’s face breaks out into an honest scowl.

“Thomas, head back and give Robin her blade if you can find her,” she orders; Corvo raises a hand and adds:

“And next time you visit, if you could bring me a Whaler’s coat, any color, and one of your wrist crossbows as well, that would be most appreciated. Thank you kindly,” almost smiling at the vague air of long-suffering the man acquires at his words before he disappears.

Corvo casts an eye at Billie, tosses the rag in his hand into the second bucket, and stands to shimmy out of his pants, grimacing as the cloth sticks to a few lacerations that had reopened from his jaunt through the sewers.

“That one looks like it’ll need stitches,” Billie comments neutrally, and Corvo studies the wound in question, flushing it with water before cursing to himself.

“I forgot to have the girl bring a thread and needle,” he admits, annoyed at himself for his lack of foresight; Billie stands where she is for a few moments longer before heaving an exasperated sigh and taking a few steps forward, fingers skimming over the pouches on her belt before she opens one and removes needle and thread from it.

“Will you do it yourself?” she asks as she passes the needle through the flame of one of the lanterns; Corvo nods as he unspools thread and takes the proffered needle from her, biting down on the leather of his belt as he threads it. The pain doesn’t affect the neatness of the row of stitches he puts in his flesh, and Billie waits until after to ask, “How did you know I wouldn’t gut you?”

“I had the feeling men didn’t much turn your fancy,” Corvo admits a touch breathlessly as he pushes his sweaty hair back from his face. From the table, Daud snorts rudely. “Now, my questions – why these men? And how much did you tell them?”

“Very little. All I provided was the push and a good excuse. They’ve been looking for a tool like you ever since whispers in the streets started getting loud about the Empress. They contacted us, wanted to know what our going rates were for a clean knife in the back, maybe some espionage. They couldn’t afford us, but a mention of you was enough to set their collective brains turning.”

“What can you tell me about them?”

Billie shifts her weight, recrosses her arms. “Admiral Havelock’s had a successful, if undistinguished, service. He’s sitting on his ass at the moment because of the naval siege, but eh – rumor has it he’s not exactly in favor up at the Tower at the moment for one reason or another. As a man, he can be a cruel bastard. Heard tale of him mixing killing and pleasure, but nothing you could point a body toward.

“Treavor Pendleton’s the youngest of three, has two twin brothers – has a noble family and all the dirty little secrets that amount of money always hides. Fragile constitution, he drinks like a dockyard whore, and his older, more successful brothers are… unstable. Mean bastards, the both of them, been that way since they were kids. Pendleton probably caught some of it, growing up, and who’s to say how much he’s hiding, himself. That sort of madness is said to run in the blood, after all.

“The last is Teague Martin – _Overseer_ Teague Martin – and I doubt you’ll ever meet a keener silver-tongued snake. Word out from Morley a decade ago had a sleek-looking fellow with ears like pot handles cuttin’ up passerby on some of those backroads, and if our holy man doesn’t bear a resemblance to those old wanted posters then I’ll eat a hagfish raw. Assuming it’s the same man, Void only knows how he managed to work his way into the orders, but it might be his mouth can’t save him this time – there’s wagging tongues up at the Abbey and his skin’s on the line after that stunt at Coldridge. Maybe they’ll hang him for treason. Who knows.”

“What’s all this business about the Flooded District and elixir rations being cut?”

And here Billie looks thoughtful. “It’s hard to say,” she begins slowly. “But the Empress has been kept locked up in the Tower with Lady Emily ever since your arrest. For their safety. Not a peep from her – hardly any have seen her, even the servants, beyond the members of her inner circle.” She frowns. “Well. One would assume they see her, at least, since there’s new orders coming out. But saying that...” And here she pauses, as though weighing her words. “It’s possible that they’re not coming straight from Jessamine’s mouth.”

Corvo hisses as the shape of what Billie is hinting at emerges. “Burrows and Campbell. Tightening the noose, then? Are they planning to repeat the Morley Insurrection?” He snarls. “And doing a damn good job of it thus far if that’s the case, what with the fact that I’m apparently allied with a group of people who’re angling to do _just that._ ” He would rise and pace but for his injuries, and even the threat of a popped stitch _almost_ isn’t enough to keep him from it, wounds or no. Dammit, dammit, dammit – all of them had been playing into Burrows’ and Campbell’s hands!

“What else is there,” and this is the first time Daud has spoken beyond his initial greeting. Corvo looks up at Billie just in time to see her shrink slightly where she stands, suddenly a chastised child instead of the lethal woman she is. She sighs.

“I found out something about the name Delilah,” she starts – and then stops, mouth twisted to the side as she picks her words. “I was… approached, when news of the death of the Knife of Dunwall got out, after I took control of the Whalers. A woman named Aurora. She was a witch – and she wanted an alliance. There was a lot of talk of safety from the coming storm and about power and ambition and what we deserved. I… turned her down. Eventually.”

“Her name wasn’t Aurora, was it?” Corvo asks, torn somewhere between horror and sympathy.

Billie takes a breath. “No. It was _Delilah_.” She grits her teeth, and the next words out of her mouth freeze Corvo’s blood in his veins where he sits, turn him into _ice_ :

“Her name was Delilah, and she’s Marked. And she’s working with Burrows.”

“ _Explain_ ,” Daud barks, and Billie’s next inhale is shaky; she runs a hand through her hair and her eyes slide away from the table on which Daud’s Heart lies.

“It. Came up, in the way of things, before I told her to fuck off, what I did for a living. She knew I was a knife, and it was – hell, old man. The cat and mouse game. I didn’t think – ”

“You weren’t careful enough. What happened.”

And here Billie looks away outright, turns her face to stare fixedly at Corvo’s bed. “The base at the Flooded District was overrun. We were attacked by Overseers. We were already on high alert because of everything, cause some of the boys left after I told ‘em you weren’t coming back, and – ” Her voice breaks, and she squeezes her eyes shut. “They brought fucking music boxes, attacked in the middle of the damn day brazen as balls. We ran. We lost a few. Everything vital, important, was already packed up and ready, just a matter of grabbing and cutting loose, but. _Fuck_. They _knew._ ”

A heavy silence falls on all of them, broken only by the dripping of water and the ticking of Daud’s Heart. Slowly, Billie shakes her head.

“Delilah ratted _us_ out, blabbed about _our_ powers, but she’s a heretic as well. Hell if I know what _her_ angle is that’ll keep her safe from the Overseers when Burrows and Campbell turn on her. She has to have _something_ , some sort of safety net – she’s too much of a crafty bitch to not. But I don’t know what exactly it is, and that makes me not want to move against her, as much as I’d fucking love to.”

“Where’s her base?” Corvo asks.

“Mutcherhaven District, upriver. She ‘n her coven are holed up out at Brigmore Manor – apparently they cleaned house on the place. Could hear the screams clear out over the river.”

“And the Whalers?”

“Out in Chandler’s Ward. Some of the factories went under when the plague siege went up, but the rest are still busy enough to cover our movements.”

Corvo runs a hand over his face, mind whirling, and winces a little at the scrape of stubble against his fingertips. “Alright. Alright. Scout Brigmore Manor at best you can. No matter everything else, we know Delilah is a threat – and, if she’s working with Burrows, removing her may unstabilize their plot enough that whatever work Havelock and his men needs doing will give me the opening I need to crack open this conspiracy. I’ll remain here. Rest, recover, think. See if I can find out any concrete details about the work they want me to do.”

He sighs, courses of action already falling into place in his head, then pauses as the present registers again. He looks up at Billie. “Before you go, though – this is, perhaps, a change of subject, but my back…”

And Billie stares at him for a moment before what Corvo is asking her to assist with registers – and she rolls her eyes even as she steps forward.

“You’re as bad as the greys, I swear. Probably have just as much control over your damn powers as well,” she says as Corvo straddles the chair he’d been sitting in; the scrape of the rag over his back and the mess of scars and half-healed injuries marring the length of it is rough but not harsh, her strokes efficient and mindful of his wounds.

“I can’t, in good conscious, deny the latter,” Corvo says, holding still; he passes the makeshift jar of tincture to Billie after she makes a pass at his skin with a dry scrap of cloth.

“I’d take another few doses of elixir to make sure none of this goes rotten. Or remedy, I suppose – might be easier to get your hands on, now. Bandages.”

“Remedy?”

“Right – suppose you wouldn’t’ve heard of it. Made by your mad little inventor out there in the shed. Supposedly works like Sokolov’s stuff to stave off the plague, but… it’s blue.” Corvo can almost hear the grimace in her next words. “And its creator is a few pearls short of a river krust, you know.” She steps away, and Corvo rises as well, pacing a few steps while gingerly swinging his arms to test the give of the bandages Billie had fastened around his torso. “One last thing,” she says. “Here.”

Corvo turns in time to see her offer something to him from a belt pouch; he stares at the rune in her hand as though it was a hagfish.

“The old man collected them. Give it to him if you don’t want it,” she says, a thread of amusement at his obvious discomfort coloring her tone; Corvo sighs as though put-upon and accepts the bit of bone and leather from her, turning to put it on the table next to Daud’s Heart. “Brigmore Manor,” he says in reminder, and she nods.

“Put on some clothes. Your pasty white ass is blinding the rats,” Billie replies before transversing away.

Corvo sits back down in the chair, dresses the last of his injuries with what’s left of the ointment, and says, quietly, “We were in Coldridge. There wasn’t anything you could have done, even if you hadn’t been half-blind from the music.”

“I felt their bonds go. I thought they’d left the Whalers, not – ” Daud cuts himself off, falling silent, and Corvo uses the last of the tincture and wraps up what’s left of himself in bandages and stands to get dressed in the clothes Thomas had brought him. After, he runs rough fingers over Daud’s Heart before picking it up and tucking it away into a pocket; he takes the dirty water down to the second floor to dump and begs a razor off of Wallace to shave away the stubble on his face with the help of a sliver of soap. He tracks down the kitchen and takes nothing but two apples and a heel of bread, making himself stretch out the food in measured paces, at least two steps for each bite as he makes his way back up to the attic (he eats the fruit core, seeds, and all and his stomach complains at the intake, roils uneasily even as it clenches in hunger, and Corvo focuses on the tread of his feet and the tick of Daud’s Heart and counts paces through the nausea.)

“You might need the power,” Daud says once Corvo has eaten the second apple, his voice measured against the circles Corvo is walking; Corvo glances at the rune where it sits on the table and sighs as he runs fingers through his hair.

“I don’t _want_ more power,” he says lowly in reply; the rune sits where it’s been laid, singing softly to him in something like whalesong and the grind of bones. He eventually wraps it up in a handkerchief and climbs the wall to reach a rafter, tucking it away. He can still hear its song, but it’s muffled somewhat by the cloth and will do for now. He gathers the coin he’d scavenged from the sewers and takes it to Piero, exchanging it for a vial of remedy, which he waits to consume until he’s back in his rooms. The color _is_ a bit unnerving, and it tastes strongly of both mint and saltwater, somehow, but his limbs do move a little easier after.

 

Then, for the lack of anything better to do, Corvo gives in to the protests of his body; he strips off his shirt, moves Daud’s Heart to his trouser pocket, and lays his blade close to his hand before he lies down and surrenders to slumber.


End file.
